Rocket poised to hit moon is Chinese, not SpaceX Falcon 9, student observations confirm | Russian cargo ship to dock with space station early Thursday | Celebrate Perseverance rover's 1-year 'Marsiversary' with these events
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A group of students has confirmed that a rocket stage poised to hit the moon next month is from a Chinese Long March launcher, not a SpaceX Falcon 9 as originally thought. The rocket body, from the Chang'e 5-T1 mission, is set to slam into the moon's far side on March 4, more than seven years after its October 2014 launch. The object was originally misidentified as the upper stage of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that launched the Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite in February 2015.
Russia's Progress 80 cargo resupply ship, which launched on Monday (Feb. 14), will arrive at the International Space Station early Thursday (Feb. 17). The uncrewed cargo freighter is scheduled to dock with the orbiting laboratory at 2:06 a.m. EST (0706 GMT). You can watch the docking live here on Space.com.
The Perseverance rover is about to celebrate one year on Mars, and NASA wants you to be part of the party. The space agency and mission team members are holding a variety of events around the country to mark the "Marsiversary" of the life-hunting, sample-caching Perseverance and the tiny helicopter Ingenuity, which touched down with the rover on Feb. 18, 2021.
An astronaut who launched on the first space shuttle to fly with a full crew and two crew members who flew on the last space shuttle to launch will be honored later this year for their contributions to the United States' space program. David Leestma, Sandy Magnus and Chris Ferguson were announced as the next class of U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame inductees on Tuesday (Feb. 15).
A supermassive black hole masked by a cloud of cosmic dust was found at the center of an active galaxy in new images from the European Southern Observatory (ESO). The galaxy, known as Messier 77 or NGC 1068, is a barred spiral galaxy located about 47 million light-years from Earth, in the constellation Cetus. Taken by the ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer in northern Chile, the observations shed new light on galaxies that have an active galactic nucleus at their core.
As climate change continues to progress, so will its effects. In a new collaborative report, NASA and other U.S. government agencies have found that sea levels will rise up to a foot by 2050. The report, which comes from a sea level rise task force that includes a number of government agencies including NASA as well as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has concluded that sea levels along U.S. coastlines will, on average, rise between 10 and 12 inches (25 to 30 centimeters) above today's levels by 2050.
On Feb. 16, 1948, the Dutch-American astronomer Gerard Kuiper discovered Miranda, a moon of Uranus. This was the fifth moon to be discovered at Uranus. So far, astronomers have found 27 moons of Uranus by now.
A new luxury watch closely tracks the phases of the moon in an elegant format — and comes with a hefty price tag. The Swiss luxury watchmaking company Ulysse Nardin launched a new wristwatch called "Blast Moonstruck," which aims to show how the moon, the sun and other celestial movements appear from the Earth's perspective. It has a limited-edition run, so if you're willing to spend $79,100 on this watch, the company urges you to buy soon.
A group of physicists has announced one of the highest performance atomic clocks ever made. The instrument is said to measure time so precisely that it will only lose one second every 300 billion years, allowing for more exact measurements of gravitational waves, dark matter and other physics phenomena. A study based on the UW-Madison-led research was published Wednesday (Feb. 16) in the journal Nature.
The Snow Moon will reach its peak today (Feb. 16) and join a cluster of planets lighting up the morning sky. The full moon, known as the Snow Moon, will be at its brightest at 11:57 a.m. EST (1657 GMT), though it will appear nearly full both the night before and the night after. And the moon isn't the only excitement in the night sky; if you look carefully by the full moon tonight you will see the bright star Regulus in the constellation Leo, the lion.
