After losing his Pacific Palisades neighborhood in the fires that swept through Los Angeles in January, Kent Tobiska, the CEO and chief scientist at Space Environment Technologies, is reconsidering a part of his work. Specifically, he’s rethinking the danger posed by geomagnetic storms. Instead of worrying only about rare storms like the 1859 Carrington event, … Read more
U.S. military officials are scrambling to upgrade decades-old systems that track objects in space — a critical capability they say is falling dangerously behind modern threats — as thousands of new satellites crowd Earth’s orbit and rival powers demonstrate increasingly sophisticated space capabilities. Military leaders and industry experts warn that this Cold War-era tracking infrastructure … Read more
Having launched on January 9, 2024 by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Einstein Probe detected several new events during its commissioning phase. Last October, Yuan Weimin, the spacecraft’s principle investigator, told China Central Television that the X-ray observatory had already discovered around 60 very strong transient celestial objects, close to a thousand potential transients, … Read more
As the use of space accelerates, so too does the risk of orbital debris — a pressing threat to communications, navigation and other technologies underpinning life on Earth. An estimated 131 million pieces of satellites and rockets larger than a millimeter are currently in orbit, traveling at speeds of up to 28,100 kilometers per hour. … Read more
Watch this video of the largest radio jet that astronomers have seen yet in the early universe. Image via NOIRLab. Largest radio jet seen yet in the early universe In the nearby universe, astronomers have seen many radio jets blasting outward from the black holes at the cores of galaxies. But on February 6, 2025, … Read more
NEW ORLEANS — Scientists continue to advance the process of updating the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Space Weather Scales, with the next steps expected to be taken as early as this year. Just like there’s a classification system for hurricanes and tornadoes, space weather storms that develop and pose threats to Earth have … Read more
Canadian artist Gustav Hahn painted his impression of what the 1913 Great Meteor Procession looked like. Image via Gustav Hahn/ Wikimedia Commons (public domain). February 9, 1913: the Great Meteor Procession An odd and still-unexplained parade of meteors on this date dazzled viewers in Canada, the northeastern United States and ships in the Atlantic all … Read more
View larger. | NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft captured this view of Uranus’ moon Ariel on January 24, 1986. We can clearly see various canyons and grooves. Image via NASA/ Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Uranus’ moon Ariel might have a subsurface ocean, a study found last year. The ocean could be ancient or it could still exist … Read more
The colored dots represent different superstructures out to 800 million light-years (250 megaparsecs) from Earth. The red dots denote Quipu, the largest structure in the universe. Yellow is Sculptor-Pegasus superstructure, green is Serpens-Corona Borealis, purple is Hercules and blue is Shapley. Image via Böhringer et al. Astronomy and Astrophysics, 2025. Used with permission. Quipu is … Read more
In the more than 60 years since the Space Age began, humans have sent more than 6,740 rockets to space. According to the ESA’s Space Debris Office, this has resulted in 56,450 objects in orbit; about 36,860 of these objects are regularly tracked and maintained in a catalog, while 10,200 are still functioning. The rest … Read more