Pent-up deal activity from 2024 looks set to spill into 2025, potentially making it the busiest period for space mergers and acquisitions in years. “The interesting thing from my perspective for 2024 was honestly the deals that didn’t get done,” noted Tyler Letarte, a principal at private equity firm AE Industrial Partners, during the SmallSat … Read more
PUNCH is a group of four satellites that will orbit Earth above the day-night terminator to study the Sun. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab On March 2, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to launch the Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission into low Earth orbit. From … Read more
As the hunt for dark matter, the universe’s most common yet most mysterious “stuff,” continues, scientists are understandably eager to get the most powerful space telescope in on the action. Space.com spoke to three scientists, cosmic detectives who are hot on the trail of dark matter candidates using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The … Read more
The Lucy spacecraft, en route to the Trojan asteroids around Jupiter, first has its sights set on a main-belt asteroid, Donaldjohanson. NASA shared this view of the targeted asteroid on February 25, 2025. Image via NASA/ Goddard/ SwRI/ Johns Hopkins APL. Lucy sees its next target The Lucy spacecraft – named for a famous fossilized … Read more
NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, is widely known as the nation’s largest rocket propulsion test site. More than 35 years ago, it also served as a hands-on classroom for NASA engineers seeking to improve the efficiency of space shuttle main engines. From 1988 to the mid-1990’s, NASA Stennis engineers operated a … Read more
Using the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) at Kitt Peak in Arizona, astronomers have discovered thousands of new black holes. These discoveries have more than tripled the amount of known intermediate-mass black holes and active black holes at the centers of dwarf galaxies. Images and videos: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da Silva/Legacy Surveys/D. Lang (Perimeter Institute)/NAOJ/HSC Collaboration/D. de … Read more
The scientists behind NASA’s largest and most powerful space telescope ever built are bracing for potentially crippling budget cuts, and the observatory is only halfway through its primary mission. The team overseeing NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has been directed to prepare for up to 20% in budget cuts that would touch on every … Read more
Whenever someone brings up Lana and Lilly Wachowski’s body of work, The Matrix is always at the center of the conversation. Maybe Speed Racer and Cloud Atlas get some mentions thanks to their vocal followers, but their spacefaring epic Jupiter Ascending is typically swept under the rug. A critical and financial disaster, most people wouldn’t … Read more
In an effort to learn more about astronaut health and the effects of space on the human body, NASA is conducting a new experiment aboard the International Space Station to speed up the detection of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, thus improving the health safety not only of astronauts but patients back on Earth. Infections caused by antibiotic-resistant … Read more
Despite what Star Trek and Star Wars may have taught you, the amount of time required to travel between stars is vast. Consider Voyager 1. The spacecraft is traveling at 38,000 mph (61,155 km/h). If Voyager 1 were pointed towards our nearest star, Proxima Centauri (which it isn’t), it would take 73,000 years to reach … Read more