Space

T-Minus: Starship’s big flight, an alien-hunter’s gift, and more

Freethink’s weekly countdown of the biggest space news, featuring Starship’s second test flight, a new “dark mysteries” telescope, and more.

Kristin Houser

An aerial view of a SpaceX's Starship taking off.

Aerospace

Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starship enters space for the first time

SpaceX’s Starship — the world’s biggest rocket — reached space on its second attempt, but the test wasn’t a complete success.

Kristin Houser

Artist's concept of the Vulcan Centaur rocket from United Launch Alliance

Aerospace

Amazon’s satellites ace first tests in space

Amazon’s Project Kuiper prototypes have aced their first tests in space, putting the company a major step closer to competing with Starlink.

Kristin Houser

An image of a spiral galaxy captured by the Hubble telescope.

Outer Space

New JWST data confirms, worsens the Hubble tension

Ethan Siegel

An image of a large antenna on a grassy hill used by SpinLaunch.

Aerospace

SpinLaunch will hurl payloads into orbit, cutting the cost of launch by 20x

Rockets are big because they require enormous amounts of fuel. SpinLaunch’s method does away with much of that by hurling payloads into space.

Adam Frank

An artist's rendering of a space station equipped with a bag for capturing space trash

Aerospace

NASA is spending $850,000 to make a bag for space trash

TransAstra has secured a $850,000 NASA contract to build an inflatable bag for capturing space trash, which could then be recycled in orbit.

Kristin Houser

Outer Space

“Ghostly” neutrinos help us see our Milky Way as never before

A unique photograph of the Milky Way galaxy was captured using the IceCube detector, which observes high-energy neutrinos from space.

Don Lincoln

An artist's rendering of NASA's X-ray observatory, XRISM

Astronomy

NASA’s next-gen X-ray observatory is ready for launch (Updated)

XRISM is a next-gen X-ray observatory expected to revolutionize our understanding of the universe’s more energetic objects.

Kristin Houser

Astronomy

New moon map reveals structures hidden beneath the lunar surface

A new moon map that reveals structures hidden deep beneath the lunar surface also helps unravel the mystery of the moon’s past.

Kristin Houser

Aerospace

India makes history by landing on the lunar south pole

India is the first nation to soft land on the lunar south pole, an elusive region thought to harbor water ice.

Kristin Houser

A black and white image of a robot with blue eyes and AI capabilities.

Why aliens are likely to be AI

Fundamental biological limitations will make long-distance space travel all but impossible for organisms. AI is more suitable.

Dirk Schulze-Makuch

Outer Space

5 revolutionary cosmic ideas that turned out to be wrong

These ideas could have revolutionized our concept of the Universe, but since evidence paves the road to reality, we've had to abandon them.

Ethan Siegel

Aerospace

NASA is sending a team of autonomous robots to the moon

NASA is sending three autonomous mobile robots to the moon where they’ll have to work as a team under challenging conditions.

Kristin Houser

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