SpaceX's Fram2, the first crewed mission ever to orbit our planet over the poles, will return to Earth today (April 4), and you can watch the action live. Fram2's Crew Dragon capsule, named Resilience, is scheduled to splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Southern California today around 12:19 p.m. EDT (1619 GMT). SpaceX will webcast the homecoming live via its website and X account, beginning about an hour prior to splashdown.
The next astronauts to fly to the moon now have a mission patch to represent their history-making journey. NASA on Thursday (April 3) debuted the official Artemis 2 insignia, its first emblem for a moon-bound crew in more than 50 years. Astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen will wear the patch when they launch on the Artemis 2 mission, currently targeted for no later than April 2026.
A small town in New York is about to become stargazing central for thousands of space fans hoping to check out the latest telescopes and more. And this year may be the event's biggest yet. The Northeast Astronomy Forum 2025 (NEAF) is billed as the "world's largest astronomy and space expo," and runs this weekend from April 5-6 at the State University of New York Rockland Community College in Suffern, New York.
One of the videos beaming back to Earth from the Fram2 astronauts looks down on as the capsule flies over Florida, zooming in on the string of launch facilities on the Atlantic coast managed by NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. "I can see our launch pad from here!" says one of the Fram2 crew off-camera, with Chun responding, "It is our launch pad! Oh my god!"
Stars are the architects of nearly all the chemical elements in the universe, including ones crucial to life as we know it, such as carbon and oxygen. Yet, despite decades of research, aspects of star formation are as mysterious as the dense, dark clouds of gas in which baby stars are embedded. The James Webb Space Telescope's observations of Sagittarius C (Sgr C), a star-forming region at the Milky Way's heart that appears to form fewer stars than expected, are shedding new light on some of these enigmatic processes.
SpaceX is gearing up for the ninth test flight of its Starship megarocket, which will be the first mission to reuse the vehicle's Super Heavy first stage. The company performed a static-fire test yesterday at its Starbase site in South Texas, briefly igniting a Super Heavy's 33 Raptor engines while the giant booster remained anchored to the launch mount.
SpinLaunch has unveiled its plans for a new broadband satellite constellation known as Meridian Space. The Meridian Space constellation will consist of small "microsatellites" that can be sent to low-Earth orbit with as many as 250 spacecraft on a single launch vehicle, according to SpinLaunch. The company received $12M in funding from Kongsberg Defense & Aerospace to help develop and commercialize the satellites, with a planned launch date of 2026 for its first on-orbit demonstrator.
