Nasa said on Friday it was planning to launch its delayed Artemis II moon mission on 6 March after successfully completing a fueling test that had caused it to stand down earlier this month. Jared Isaacman, the space agency’s newly confirmed administrator, cited “major progress” since the original so-called wet dress rehearsal in which engineers
An accomplished Caltech astrophysicist with more than four decades of research contributions in galactic astronomy and the study of distant planets was fatally shot in a rural area of the Antelope Valley on Monday morning. A suspect in the shooting has been charged with murder. Deputies responded to a 911 call for an assault with
For decades, cosmologists have largely agreed on one ending: a Big Freeze. Driven by dark energy, space itself expands at an accelerating rate, pushing galaxies farther apart until stars burn out and the universe grows cold and empty. Now, theoretical physicists at Cornell University are proposing a different fate. Henry Tye and his colleagues argue
The cliff face at Santa Cruz beach holds its secrets in layers. For 150 million years, a cluster of sandstone-encased eggs lay buried within it, undisturbed through the opening of the North Atlantic and the entire span of human history. When researchers from the Torres Vedras Natural History Society finally exposed the block during routine
A fluffy cluster of stars spilling across the sky may have a secret hidden in its heart: a swarm of over 100 stellar-mass black holes. The star cluster in question is called Palomar 5. It’s a stellar stream that stretches out across 30,000 light-years, and is located around 80,000 light-years away. Such globular clusters are
In Andy Weir’s bestselling novel The Martian, foul-mouthed protagonist Mark Watney “sciences the shit” out of his circumstances to survive being stranded on Mars. The result is an engrossing work of science fiction, particularly captivating for its apparent realism. Watney ekes out an existence by eating potatoes sowed in Martian soil fertilized by his own
On 14 February 2026, at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, Kelly Fast presented data on a persistent gap in planetary defense capabilities. Fast, NASA’s acting planetary defense officer, detailed the discrepancy between estimated and detected populations of near Earth asteroids larger than 140 meters. The figures indicate
Nasa targets early March to send humans back around the Moon BBC NASA conducts second rocket fueling test that will decide when Artemis astronauts head to the moon AP News NASA eyes March 6 to launch 4 astronauts to the moon on Artemis II mission NPR NASA Eyes Next Wet Dress Rehearsal for Artemis II NASA (.gov) Moon mission
Many people imagine Earth’s interior mantle as separate layers stacked on top of each other, like a layered cake, with each layer representing a plate. In reality, those internal zones are complex and often full of surprises. Seismologists have relied on specific types of earthquake waves to learn about Earth’s subsurface, but now a different
Welcome to Edition 8.30 of the Rocket Report! As I write this week’s edition, NASA’s Space Launch System rocket is undergoing a second countdown rehearsal at Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The outcome of the test will determine whether NASA has a shot at launching the Artemis II mission around the Moon next month, or if