NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has finished aligning its instruments in space, a key commissioning step before science begins and before the coronagraph's starlight tests.
SpaceAndSky news desk · 5 min read
Solar systemA tiny asteroid slipped by inside the Moon's orbit
Coming up in the sky
- NOV13Planet paradeMercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter before dawn, until Dec 4
- NOV16Mars and Jupiter meetAbout 1 degree apart in the morning sky
- NOV16-17Leonid meteor showerPeak night
- NOV20Mercury’s best morning viewFarthest from the Sun in our sky (20°): look before sunrise
- NOV24Full Moon: Beaver MoonRises at sunset and stays up all night
- DEC13-14Geminid meteor showerPeak night, 40-50 an hour under dark skies
Trending
Mars rovers today: Where Perseverance and Curiosity are and their latest pictures
Two NASA rovers still work on Mars: Perseverance, which just broke Opportunity's driving record,…
When is the next solar eclipse? Dates and viewing regions
The 2026 total eclipse has passed; the next is an annular eclipse on Feb.…
Planets5 bright planetsSaturn after sunsetMercury before dawnVenus before dawnMars before dawnJupiter before dawnWhere to look ›MoonWaxing Crescent19% lit, waxingRise and set times ›Northern lightsQuietKp 1.7 now, up to 1.7 in the next 24 hours.Your chance tonight ›Space stationNext passChoose your city to see when the ISS passes over you.Live map ›
- Dragon’s return cargo includes bacterial DNA, lab-grown blood vessels and a used spacesuit
- Nearby Type Ia supernova in NGC 1433 is still brightening, and telescopes are lining up
- Bennu’s amino acid carries the strongest isotope anomaly yet seen in space organics
Next launches
Starlink Group 31-2Starship V3 · SpaceX
MKA Kinosputnik, KOEN and othersSoyuz 2.1b Fregat-M · Russian Federal Space Agency (ROSCOSMOS)
The Mountain God RisesElectron · Rocket Lab
Latest News
SpaceX plans $74 billion in supercomputer campuses in Texas and Arizona
SpaceX has set out two supercomputer projects, $24 billion at Starbase and about $50 billion in Arizona, with a $220 million Brownsville water commitment…
Hera’s first look at Didymos shows a sharp ridge and a half-hidden moonlet
From 56 km away, ESA's Hera probe has imaged the asteroid Didymos, with a sharp equatorial ridge and part of its small…
Hubble’s nine lenses show Roman what to hunt for in dark matter
NASA has released a nine-panel gallery of gravitational lenses seen by Hubble, a preview of what the new Roman telescope will find…
ispace and KDDI plan a Moon communications network Japan could run itself
Japanese lander company ispace and telecom giant KDDI signed a new agreement to explore a lunar communications network that Japan could operate…
Asteroid platinum could crash prices, but only after a long gold rush, MIT study says
Two MIT-affiliated authors model what asteroid platinum would do to prices: a boom for early miners, then a fall to near the…
Comets probably did not seed life on Earth, Cambridge study finds
Cambridge researchers say comets probably did not deliver the molecules of life: they strike too fast and too steeply for fragile organic…
Featured
Asteroid 99942 Apophis: How close it passes on April 13, 2029, and how to see it
On April 13, 2029, the asteroid Apophis passes about 32,000 km above Earth, closer than many…
Starbase could host up to 456 Starship launches a year, FAA review says
The FAA has opened scoping for an environmental impact statement covering up to 456 Starship-Super Heavy…
ESCAPADE’s twin Mars probes swing past Earth with a 9-minute burn on Nov. 7 and 9
Each of NASA's two ESCAPADE spacecraft will fly past Earth on Nov. 7 and Nov. 9…
A year in a 3D-printed Mars habitat: NASA’s CHAPEA crew nears the exit
Four volunteers have lived as if on Mars for 365 days inside a Houston habitat. They…
3I/ATLAS carries methane with 13 times more heavy hydrogen than any comet we have measured
Webb spectra of interstellar object 3I/ATLAS show methane with 3.18% heavy hydrogen, higher than any methane…
Mars facts: How far away it is, how cold it gets, its weather and the search for life
Mars is a cold, dry, dusty world half Earth's width, between 54.6 and 401.4 million km…
Leaving Earth soon
Full launch schedule ›- NOV13SpaceXStarlink Group 31-2Starship V3 · Communications22:47 UTC
- NOV14Russian Federal Space Agency (ROSCOSMOS)MKA Kinosputnik, KOEN and othersSoyuz 2.1b Fregat-M · Technology01:16 UTC
- NOV14Rocket LabThe Mountain God RisesElectron · Earth Science05:30 UTC
- NOV14United Launch AllianceAmazon LeoVulcan VC6L · Communications17:32 UTC
Times in your time zone. Launch times change often; the schedule refreshes every few minutes.
Rocket Launches
Starship will try to fly itself back to Starbase and be caught by the tower on Flight 15
- India’s GSLV-F18 puts NVS-03 navigation satellite into its planned orbit
- Japan sets Mars moons mission launch for Oct. 19 UTC, with a Phobos sample due home in 2031
- Eight AI computing satellites ride Zhuque-2E in a 10-satellite launch
Missions
Voyager’s team to take questions a day after the probe passes one light-day
- Curiosity tests doing two jobs at once to save power as its output slowly falls
- Perseverance’s first rock sample in over a year may be among its oldest
- Mars rover finds the signature of ruby’s mineral in light-toned rocks
Universe
Two black holes already feeding on a grand scale, only 900 million years after the Big Bang
- Gravitational waves could expose planets circling dead stars, NASA team shows
- A hidden black hole or neutron star may be behind a star’s 113-day eruptions
- Webb finds brown dwarfs only twice Jupiter’s mass, the lightest known
Top categories
Guides
How to see it, when it happens, what it means
Leonid meteor shower 2026: When it peaks on November 17 and how to watch
The Leonids peak around November 17 with up to about 15 meteors an hour under dark skies, and…
NASA Jupiter photos: The best Juno images and what they reveal about the giant planet
NASA's Juno spacecraft has photographed Jupiter from closer than any camera before it, and its images show deep…
James Webb Space Telescope images: Where to find them and what they have shown
NASA's image gallery holds every public Webb picture, free to download; here is how the images are made,…
Rocket launch from Vandenberg: Where to watch, how to check times and what to expect
Vandenberg launches can be seen from public roads, beaches and hills near Lompoc; the base, SpaceX and a…
The universe doesn’t stand still
Latest discoveries & stories
Why Uranus and Neptune have lopsided magnetic fields, and how fast they may change
Simulations from the University of Texas at Austin link the tilted, disordered fields of Uranus and Neptune to changes in…
A swirl on the Sun’s surface may explain why its atmosphere is so hot
A new paper links tiny swirls on the Sun's surface, recently imaged by the Inouye Solar Telescope, to the long-standing…
Two Mars probes used Earth as a slingshot, two days apart, and both burns worked
NASA's two ESCAPADE spacecraft each swung past Earth with a 9-minute engine burn, the first powered Earth flyby NASA has…
After 378 days in a Mars habitat, four volunteers step outside in Houston
NASA's second yearlong Mars simulation ended on Oct. 31, with four volunteers leaving a 3D-printed habitat in Houston after a…
Student teams can win a share of $1 million by designing parts of NASA’s Moon Base
NASA's new Moon Base Student Challenge asks U.S. high school and college teams to design systems for a lunar South…
NASA lines up eight Moon lander firms for $10 billion and a nuclear rover
NASA named eight companies for CLPS 2, a contract worth up to $10 billion, and gave Blue Origin $94 million…
Astronaut applications open: NASA picks its next class for the Moon Base
NASA is taking applications for its next astronaut class until Dec. 3, with selection due in late 2027 for crews…
Station’s last new solar array lifts its power by about 30% after a 7-hour spacewalk
Two astronauts finished a years-long upgrade, taking the International Space Station from 160 to 215 kilowatts, then spent Friday cleaning…