Five years and 2.2 billion miles after launch, NASA's Lucy is the first spacecraft to reach the swarm of Trojan asteroids that share Jupiter's orbit, with its first flyby set…
SpaceAndSky news desk · 5 min read
Solar systemInterstellar comet ice formed in a very cold place
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.…
Planets4 bright planetsSaturn most of the nightMercury after sunsetMars before dawnJupiter before dawnWhere to look ›MoonWaning Gibbous90% lit, waningRise and set times ›Northern lightsQuietKp 0.7 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 ›
- Menon and Kutryk to fit a new roll-out solar array to the station’s port truss
- NASA picks 19 projects for volunteers to hunt comets, rogue planets and Moon iron
- Curiosity lines up its next drill hole on a rock packed with crystal-shaped discs
Next launches
IRNSS-1LGSLV Mk. II · Indian Space Research Organization
Starlink Group 15-18Falcon 9 Block 5 · SpaceX
The Sea God SurveysElectron · Rocket Lab
Latest News
Rubin finds a possible dwarf planet beyond Pluto, up to 1,500 km across
NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory has found 2026 ED138, an icy object beyond Pluto that may be round enough to count as a dwarf…
NASA locks in UVEX: $590 million and a launch no later than January 2031
After passing Key Decision Point C, NASA's UVEX ultraviolet survey telescope now has a fixed price and a launch deadline of January…
Hera’s first look at Didymos and Dimorphos shows two separate asteroids
From 1,280 km away, ESA's planetary defence probe has split what used to be a single dot into the asteroid pair that…
A dead star has two rings of debris, and a glimpse of the Sun’s far future
ESO's Very Large Telescope has found two concentric rings of gas and debris around the white dwarf J1328-1450, the first double ring…
Galileo’s next-generation fleet grows to 16 satellites after ESA orders four more
ESA has added four satellites to its Galileo Second Generation order, taking the fleet to 16, with delivery planned for 2031 and…
Mars dust is finer than thought, and Perseverance has now measured it
NASA's Perseverance rover has made the first on-site measurements of fine and ultrafine Martian dust, grains small enough to reach the lungs…
Featured
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…
Planet’s sharper Pelican-12 satellite reaches orbit with onboard AI and a data-relay test
Planet Labs says its second-generation Pelican-12 is in orbit after a SpaceX rideshare launch, with a…
A-Carinid meteors flare again, with naked-eye rates near 10 an hour
CAMS observers report that the A-Carinid meteor shower, absent in most years, was active on Oct.…
Europe’s Moon drill, built to cut a metre down, passes a deployment test
ESA's Prospect drill, due to search for water ice near the lunar South Pole in 2027,…
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…
Orionid meteor shower 2026: Peak night of October 21-22 and how the Moon affects it
The Orionids peak overnight October 21-22, 2026, but a bright waxing gibbous Moon hides the fainter…
Leaving Earth soon
Full launch schedule ›- OCT30Indian Space Research OrganizationIRNSS-1LGSLV Mk. II · Navigation18:21 UTCOne to watch
- OCT31SpaceXStarlink Group 15-18Falcon 9 · Communications03:48 UTC
- NOV2Rocket LabThe Sea God SurveysElectron · Earth Sciencearound 08:00 UTC
- NOV3CAS SpaceSpaceSail Polar Group TBD?Kinetica 2 · Communicationsaround 00:00 UTC
Times in your time zone. Launch times change often; the schedule refreshes every few minutes.
Rocket Launches
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
- Nine launches this week, led by Japan’s H3 sending MMX toward Mars’ moon Phobos
- Gilmour Space finds oxidizer pump faults behind Eris rocket’s 14-second flight
Missions
NEO Surveyor’s 20-foot sunshade now carries 864 solar cells and all of the spacecraft’s power
- Astronauts will rehearse Moon landings in a flight simulator at NASA Ames
- Europe’s ice satellite CRISTAL unfolds its solar wings and passes its first big tests
- Swift ends science after 21 years, with 2,000 gamma-ray bursts logged
Universe
Webb finds thousands of newborn stars wrapped in smoky clouds of the Large Magellanic Cloud
- ELT mirror passes the halfway mark: 931 segments, nearly 500 already in Chile
- Treble Clef radio shape traced to a black hole outburst and a cluster collision
- ALMA finds rings and gaps in compact planet-forming disks
Top categories
Guides
How to see it, when it happens, what it means
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…
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 satellites, and…
The universe doesn’t stand still
Latest discoveries & stories
NASA’s PACE satellite can now map autumn red across the whole planet
NASA's PACE satellite measures leaf pigments across the planet every day or two, and scientists are asking the public for…
Comet 3I/ATLAS explained: Discovery, orbit, composition and its exit from the solar system
3I/ATLAS is the third known object to arrive from another star system. It has passed the Sun and Earth and…
Balloon telescope finds hair-thin magnetic threads above the quiet Sun
Japan's NAOJ reports that Sunrise-III, a balloon-borne solar telescope, found thin magnetic threads in the Sun's lower atmosphere, which could…
How to watch a rocket launch in Florida: Viewing spots, tickets and timing
The closest public view is at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, but free parks along the Space Coast also work.…
Artemis II: The crew, the flight around the Moon and what comes next for Artemis
Artemis II sent four astronauts around the Moon and back in April 2026; Artemis III now tests landers in Earth…
Starship will wait in Earth orbit for Orion; Blue Moon takes a polar route
NASA, SpaceX and Blue Origin have redesigned how their crewed landers reach the Moon and meet Orion, so that astronauts…
Artemis III will park in Earth orbit and dock with two commercial Moon landers
NASA says Artemis III will launch in 2027 with four astronauts on a 14-day Earth-orbit mission to dock Orion with…
A marsquake from 2021 shows Mars’s giant canyon is still slipping
Imperial College London researchers traced a 2021 marsquake detected by NASA's InSight to a deep fault beneath Valles Marineris, the…