9 satellites launching on Japanese rocket tonight | SpaceX's Crew-3 is ready for a Halloween weekend launch | Russian film crew docks at space station to shoot movie
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Nine small satellites will launch to Earth orbit atop a Japanese rocket tonight (Oct. 6), and you can watch the spaceflight action live. An Epsilon rocket is scheduled to lift off from Japan's Uchinoura Space Center tonight at 8:51 p.m. EDT (0051 GMT on Oct. 7). You can watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or directly via JAXA.
SpaceX's newest crewed mission to space is ready for launch! Crew-3, the space company's fifth crewed flight to space (and its fourth to the International Space Station) is gearing up to fly four astronauts to the orbiting lab aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule Halloween weekend, on Saturday, Oct. 30.
A Soyuz spacecraft carrying a Russian film crew docked at the International Space Station Tuesday (Oct. 5) after a short flight from Earth to begin a 12-day movie shoot in orbit. The Soyuz linked up with the space station at 8:22 am EDT after a four-hour trip that began with a successful launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The Soyuz ferried Russian actress Yulia Peresild and director Klim Shipenko to the station alongside veteran cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, who commanded the capsule. Peresild and Shipenko will spend the next 12 days shooting scenes for a space film called "The Challenge" on the station.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has set its sights beyond Mars. The nation Tuesday (Oct. 5) announced plans to launch an ambitious mission to the asteroid belt in 2028. It will be the UAE's second interplanetary effort; the first, the Emirates Mars Mission, launched an orbiter called Hope to the Red Planet in July 2020.
This week, special celestial speckles will cascade over Earth as part of a meteor shower that has never rained down on the planet before. A new meteor shower began outbursting last week and astronomers expect its main peak to happen in the next few days. The event is happening over the southernmost regions of Earth's Southern Hemisphere, so radar instruments in New Zealand, Argentina and Chile are in the best spots to detect these faint but extraordinary "shooting stars."
Scientists have identified a rare solar system object with traits of both an asteroid and a comet. The object, dubbed 2005 QN173, orbits like any other asteroid, but most such objects are rocks that don't change much as they loop through the solar system. Not so for 2005 QN173, which was first spotted in 2005 (hence the name), according to new research. Instead, it looks like a comet, shedding dust as it travels and sporting a long, thin tail, which suggests that it's covered with icy material vaporizing away into space — even though comets usually follow elliptical paths that regularly approach and retreat from the sun.
Two astronauts expected to fly on early missions of Boeing's crew capsule will instead ride to orbit with SpaceX, NASA announced today (Oct. 6). The agency has reassigned astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada to SpaceX's Crew-5 mission, which is expected to launch toward the International Space Station no earlier than the fall of 2022.
The first Italian woman to launch into space is no longer a one-of-a-kind Barbie. Samantha Cristoforetti, an astronaut with the European Space Agency (ESA), made her debut as part of the fashion doll line three years ago, but only as a couple of one-off models for display. Now, Cristoforetti's Signature Role Model Barbie doll is for sale and is raising funds for a scholarship in celebration of "Women in Space," the theme of this year's World Space Week that began on Monday (Oct. 4).
Got a question for "Star Trek" actor William Shatner? You could see it answered in an interactive conversation powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and using video responses that Shatner prerecorded.
