Space on IT News

Earth Might Survive the Sun's Death After All, New Model Suggests

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0800

For decades, astronomers have argued about whether Earth will be swallowed when the sun dies. Around 5 billion years from now, our star will exhaust its hydrogen fuel and swell into a red giant large enough to engulf Mercury and Venus. Most models have assumed Earth follows the same fate.

A study published this June in Astronomy & Astrophysics says otherwise.

The World's First Commercial Nuclear-Powered Satellite Just Reached Orbit

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0800

A satellite powered by a nuclear battery — the first of its kind to fly as a commercial payload — reached orbit early Tuesday morning aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The spacecraft, called BOHR (short for Betavoltaic Orbital High-Reliability satellite), was built by City Labs, a Florida-based company. It hitchhiked to space on SpaceX’s Transporter-17 rideshare mission, which carried 81 payloads total from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

SpaceX Deorbited 260 Starlink Satellites in Six Months — and the Environmental Questions Are Piling Up

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0800

The numbers are hard to ignore. Between December 2025 and May 2026, SpaceX deliberately deorbited and destroyed 260 Starlink satellites — 176 from the first-generation constellation and the rest from the second generation — by steering them into Earth’s atmosphere to burn up on reentry. The company disclosed the figure in a semi-annual report filed with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission earlier this month.

China puts another batch of Qianfan internet satellites into orbit with Long March 6A

Sat, 04 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0800

China launched another batch of satellites for its ambitious Qianfan broadband internet constellation on Saturday, sending the 13th group of polar orbit satellites into space from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center. The Long March 6A rocket lifted off at 5:30 p.m. Beijing time and delivered the payloads to their intended orbit without issue.

NASA Launches Daring Rescue to Save the Swift Space Observatory from Burning Up

Sat, 04 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0800

Twenty-two years is a long time for anything in low Earth orbit to stay alive. The Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, launched in November 2004 to catch gamma-ray bursts as they flash across the universe, has been doing exactly that. But orbital decay is patient — and without intervention, the aging space telescope would fall below the survivable 300-kilometer altitude threshold this autumn, eventually burning up in the atmosphere.

NASA isn’t letting that happen.

NVIDIA's Jetson AI Platform Is Headed to Lunar Orbit

Tue, 30 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0800

When Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost 1 lander touched down on the moon in March 2025, it beamed back nearly 120GB of raw data — images and video from onboard cameras. Scientists are still processing it.

The company’s next mission won’t wait for Earth-bound analysis.

Rocket Lab to acquire Iridium for $8 billion in landmark space industry deal

Tue, 30 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0800

Rocket Lab is buying Iridium for $8 billion in a cash-and-stock deal that would merge one of the most active satellite launchers with one of the oldest satellite communications networks in orbit. The acquisition, announced Monday, is expected to close by mid-2027.

NASA's Lucy Spacecraft Finds Water Clues on a Peanut-Shaped Asteroid

Sat, 27 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0800

There’s a quiet tension at the heart of planetary science. We know water was abundant in the early solar system — its fingerprints are everywhere, from the Martian poles to the icy crusts of Jupiter’s moons. But exactly how it was distributed across the inner solar system remains one of the field’s most persistent open questions.

Last April, during a close flyby of the main-belt asteroid (52246) Donaldjohanson, NASA’s Lucy spacecraft delivered something that sharpens the picture: a peanut-shaped world tumbling through space in a slow, wobbling spin, its surface marked by minerals that could only have formed in the presence of liquid water.

Large Asteroid to Safely Pass Earth This Saturday, Visible with Small Telescopes

Wed, 24 Jun 2026 23:29:00 +0800

The European Space Agency has confirmed that a large near-Earth asteroid will make a close but perfectly safe pass by our planet this weekend, offering amateur astronomers a rare chance to spot a sizable interplanetary visitor. Asteroid (152637) 1997 NC1, a rocky body first catalogued in 1997, will reach its closest approach to Earth on Saturday at 19:14 Beijing time (11:14 UTC), coming within approximately 2.56 million kilometers — more than six times the distance between Earth and the Moon.

Hubble Telescope Detects Ultraviolet Light from Galaxy Just 1.4 Billion Years After the Big Bang

Wed, 24 Jun 2026 13:12:00 +0800

NASA announced on June 23 that astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have successfully detected ultraviolet light originating from a galaxy that existed a mere 1.4 billion years after the Big Bang. The discovery marks a significant breakthrough in observational cosmology, piercing a veil that researchers long believed to be impenetrable.

Chinese Scientists Discover Mysterious Double-Flash X-Ray Source That Defies Explanation

Tue, 23 Jun 2026 23:28:00 +0800

Astronomers using China’s Einstein Probe satellite have uncovered a deeply puzzling X-ray transient source that refuses to fit into any known category of cosmic explosion. Designated EP240305a, the source exhibits a distinctive double-flash pattern and jet-like afterglow strongly reminiscent of a gamma-ray burst — yet, crucially, no gamma rays were ever detected. The findings, published June 13 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, have sparked intense interest across the international astronomy community and may point to an entirely new class of high-energy transient.

SpaceX's Mysterious 'Starfall' Return Capsule Set for Maiden Flight, Featuring a Flat Disc Design

Tue, 23 Jun 2026 07:28:00 +0800

SpaceX is preparing to launch the maiden flight of “Starfall,” an unconventional return capsule developed almost entirely in-house, as early as Tuesday, June 23. The Falcon 9 rocket is targeting a launch window opening at 6:43 AM Eastern Time from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s SLC-40, with a backup window the following day. Nearly everything known about the vehicle comes from regulatory filings with the FAA and FCC — SpaceX has yet to formally unveil the spacecraft to the public.