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An Astounding 3 Meteor Showers Are Visible In The U.S. This Week

— CFOTO/Future Publishing/Getty Images With a little luck and a lot of patience, you can see three meteor showers at once this week. The Alpha Capricornids and the Southern Delta Aquarid meteor showers are both at their peak this week, and the Perseids are building toward their peak on August 11. Here’s your guide to […]

With Starliner Astronauts Stuck Indefinitely, The ISS Might Tie A 15-Year-Old Spaceflight Record

— NASA The next 72 hours will be critical to determining just how crowded the International Space Station (ISS) could soon get. This afternoon, the program manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, Steve Stich, will meet with the program manager of the ISS, Dana Weigel. They’ll discuss different options to accommodate, or avoid altogether, tying […]

This Scorchingly Hot Planet That Rains Down Glass Apparently Also Smells Like Rotten Eggs

— Roberto Molar Candanosa/Johns Hopkins Univeristy Astronomers don’t just detect exoplanets, or planets that orbit other stars, with today’s sharp telescopes. They can also feel them. Prior data from the atmosphere of the Jupiter-sized world HD 189733 b, for instance, revealed its harsh, rapidly-blowing rain of glass, and that it is scorchingly hot. A new […]

We Might Witness A Star Explode Soon — And It’s Not Betelgeuse

— NASA A mismatched pair of stars 3,000 light years away may be gearing up for an explosion in the next few months. T Coronae Borealis (T CrB to its friends) is normally too dim to see with the unaided eye, but roughly every 80 years, it flares brightly enough to appear as a “new” […]

A Weird Final Test for Boeing’s Starliner Uncovered the Likely Cause of Several Recently-Failed Thrusters

— Maxar/Maxar/Getty Images On Saturday, the Boeing Starliner pushed ever so slightly against the International Space Station (ISS) as part of a test to evaluate several recently-failed thrusters. During the final phase of the Starliner’s docking rendezvous two weeks ago, as the vehicle was in the final stretch to deliver the project’s first-ever passengers to […]

June’s Summer Solstice Strawberry Moon Will Be Weirder Than Usual

— oversnap/E+/Getty Images With the full Strawberry Moon looming large on the southeastern horizon, June 21 will be the darkest full Moon night of the year. June 2024’s full Moon is the Strawberry Moon, and this year it coincides with the summer Solstice, which makes its appearance a little stranger — and darker — than usual. […]

From Urine (Yes, Urine) to Helium: The Most Common and Bizarre Leaks During Space Travel

— Joe Raedle/Getty Images News/Getty Images The Boeing Starliner will return to Earth no earlier than June 22, a four-day delay from its previous target date. Helium leaks, discovered once Starliner was in space, may be part of the reason for the delay. Hours after Starliner launched, teams detected helium leaks on several of the […]

Boeing Starliner Helps ISS Process An “Awful Lot Of” Stored Urine

— NASA Thanks to the Boeing Starliner, astronauts can soon pee in peace. When the new human-rated spacecraft successfully ferried NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the International Space Station (ISS) on Wednesday, it added a last-second high-prized payload along with it: A brand new pump for the urine processor. The pump onboard […]

NASA Made This Dramatic Decision To Fight For The Hubble Space Telescope’s Survival

— NASA The team behind the iconic Hubble Space Telescope is making the best out of a difficult situation, according to a new announcement from NASA. Space agency officials revealed that, while Hubble still has at least another decade of space observations, it’s going to become much less efficient than before. Hubble’s capacity to observe […]

China’s Chang’e-6 Successfully Landed on the Moon’s Elusive Dark Side — Here’s What Will Happen Next

— Xinhua News/CNSA China’s Chang’e-6 mission to the far side of the Moon has hit the ground running. On Saturday, the latest of the Chang’e lunar fleet landed on the side of the Moon we cannot see from Earth. The mission aims to collect about four and a half pounds of material, and then will […]