11+ mon, 3+ week ago (1197+ words) Thursday, February 29, 2024: Just off the coast of San Diego, Artemis 2 astronauts, NASA personnel and the U.S. Navy practiced splashdown operations this month for the eventual end of the agency's forthcoming crewed moon mission, slated to lift off in September 2025. In a callback to the Apollo moon missions of the 1960s and 1970s, the multi-day Underway Recovery Test 11 saw helicopters, rescue divers, a huge military ship and hundreds of people unite to practice getting the astronauts safely out of the water. Full story: Get to the choppa! Artemis 2 moon astronauts practice splashdown with U.S. Navy (images, video) Tuesday, February 27, 2024: Preparations are underway to send the next round of astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). SpaceX's Crew-8 mission for NASA will launch from historic Launch Complex-39A, currently scheduled no earlier than 12:04 a.m. EST on March 1, 2024. Pictured above is Crew-8's spacecraft and launch vehicle. Crew Dragon…...

1+ mon, 3+ week ago (438+ words) Amazon Prime Day in October is in its final day and this telescope deal on the Celestron Inspire 100AZ brings the price down to $304 " perfect for a better view of comet Lemmon. Amazon's Prime Day in October is on its final day and this deal is a scorcher. The Celestron Inspire 100AZ is at its cheapest price since May. It's a great budget telescope that is perfect for levelled-up views of the moon and the planets. We think it's one of the best telescopes you can buy and is also one of the best for a quick set-up if you are a beginner skywatcher. You can get the Celestron Inspire 100AZ refractor telescope on sale right now on Amazon for $304. Save $76 on our best budget telescope, now even cheaper! It has a 3.94-inch aperture and comes with a couple of eyepieces for different…...

6+ mon, 3+ week ago (471+ words) Anthony Wood joined'Space.com'in April 2025 after contributing articles to outlets including IGN, New Atlas and Gizmodo. He has a passion for the night sky, science, Hideo Kojima, and human space exploration, and can't wait for the day when astronauts once again set foot on the moon. "This image was captured during a spontaneous walk with a friend," Spiroski said in an email to Space.com. "We headed out around blue hour, hoping to shoot some long exposure shots by the shore of Lake Ohrid. As the sun was setting below the horizon, I spotted the thin crescent moon beginning to set - it was very beautiful. I quickly opened an astronomy app to check what else might be visible, and noticed Jupiter would soon be appearing low on the horizon." Want to explore the solar system? The Celestron NexStar 4SE is ideal…...

3+ mon, 1+ week ago (467+ words) The Celestron NexStar 8 SE telescope is universally loved by astronomers and comes highly recommended by our own telescope experts, and has hit its lowest price of the year. Save $200 on the Celestron NexStar 8 SE telescope " was $1,699, now $1,499 at Amazon. Our resident telescope expert, Jase Parnell-Brookes, gave the Celestron NexStar 8 SE an impressive four and a half stars out of five in review. He loved how accessible it was from beginner to advanced skywatchers, as well as its portable nature. Not only this, but with its catadioptric construction, it means it is one of the most compact telescopes for deep space viewing. With $200 off, this is a great Amazon telescope deal from one of the leading brands for telescopes, giving you stunning views of the night sky. It's worth noting that several retailers are price-matching this Amazon price, and Walmart has…...

1+ mon, 3+ week ago (481+ words) This Pococo Galaxy Star Projector outclasses many of the competition, with its portability and realistic images, and it's an absolute steal at $80 this Prime Day. The Pococo Galaxy Star Projector is proof that you don't have to spend a fortune to fill a room with realistic images of the cosmos. It punches well above its price bracket and, as one of Amazon's Prime Day deals, you can save an amazing $46 on this portable gem. Get the Pococo Galaxy Star Projector right now at Amazon for just $80.We rank the Pococo Galaxy Star Projector as the best value rechargeable star projector, and for good reason. It offers vivid, accurate images of the cosmos and is a breeze to use, for children and adults alike. It comes with two discs, but can be expanded with other disc sets, all of which are…...

6+ mon, 3+ week ago (498+ words) Space.com contributing writer Stefanie Waldek is a self-taught space nerd and aviation geek who is passionate about all things spaceflight and astronomy. With a background in travel and design journalism, as well as a Bachelor of Arts degree from New York University, she specializes in the budding space tourism industry and Earth-based astrotourism. In her free time, you can find her watching rocket launches or looking up at the stars, wondering what is out there. Learn more about her work at www.stefaniewaldek.com. Have you ever had an X-ray taken of your bones? Well, so has the Milky Way. NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory regularly images our home galaxy, and a recent scan caught something that might be familiar to some of you: a fractured "bone." The bone-like structure in the image above was imaged using radio data from…...

10+ mon, 1+ week ago (410+ words) Elizabeth Howell (she/her), Ph.D., was a staff writer in the spaceflight channel between 2022 and 2024 specializing in Canadian space news. She was contributing writer for Space.com for 10 years from 2012 to 2024. Elizabeth's reporting includes multiple exclusives with the White House, leading world coverage about a lost-and-found space tomato on the International Space Station, witnessing five human spaceflight launches on two continents, flying parabolic, working inside a spacesuit, and participating in a simulated Mars mission. Her latest book, "Why Am I Taller?" (ECW Press, 2022) is co-written with astronaut Dave Williams." 21. A star is flinging comets at Earth A long-standing theory known as Nemesis supposes that there is some sort of "death star" on the outer edge of the solar system, whose orbital motions perturb comets in an icy region of objects known as the Oort Cloud. According to the myth, the…...

7+ mon, 1+ week ago (534+ words) Daisy Dobrijevic joined Space.com in February 2022 having previously worked for our sister publication All About Space magazine as a staff writer. Before joining us, Daisy completed an editorial internship with the BBC Sky at Night Magazine and worked at the National Space Centre in Leicester, U.K., where she enjoyed communicating space science to the public. In 2021, Daisy completed a PhD in plant physiology and also holds a Master's in Environmental Science, she is currently based in Nottingham, U.K. Daisy is passionate about all things space, with a penchant for solar activity and space weather. She has a strong interest in astrotourism and loves nothing more than a good northern lights chase!" The Lyrid meteor shower is active between April 16 and April 25, and peaks on April 22. During the peak, Earth passes through the densest part of the debris stream left behind by…...

7+ mon, 2+ week ago (546+ words) Daisy Dobrijevic joined Space.com in February 2022 having previously worked for our sister publication All About Space magazine as a staff writer. Before joining us, Daisy completed an editorial internship with the BBC Sky at Night Magazine and worked at the National Space Centre in Leicester, U.K., where she enjoyed communicating space science to the public. In 2021, Daisy completed a PhD in plant physiology and also holds a Master's in Environmental Science, she is currently based in Nottingham, U.K. Daisy is passionate about all things space, with a penchant for solar activity and space weather. She has a strong interest in astrotourism and loves nothing more than a good northern lights chase!" The predicted G3-level storm conditions could bring northern lights as far south as Illinois and Oregon (typically 50" geomagnetic lat.). The incoming "punch" from the sun will arrive in the form…...

5+ mon, 4+ day ago (301+ words) The telescope, working with the world's largest digital camera, scans the night sky in search of dark matter. The technology used to capture these images was years in the making, and will help launch a whole new era of studying the night sky. The Rubin Observatory houses the 8.4-meter Simonyi Survey Telescope and its corresponding LSST camera (LSSTCam), the largest digital camera in the world. Using these tools, the Rubin Observatory studies faint objects in our solar system as astronomers try to study the dark matter that makes up a majority of our universe. The Rubin Observatory resides in Cerro Pach'n in the Andes Mountains in Chile. The Rubin Observatory was born out of a decades-long quest by astronomers to understand what dark matter actually is. The LSST camera, comprising of 3200 megapixels, was built at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory…...