The Canadian Space Agency has hired Quebec City's ABB to sharpen and test a laser instrument that could measure tiny amounts of methane near the Martian surface.
SpaceAndSky news desk · 5 min read
Space newsA balloon telescope spots fine magnetic threads on the Sun
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.…
Planets3 bright planetsSaturn most of the nightMars before dawnJupiter before dawnWhere to look ›MoonWaning Gibbous67% lit, waningRise and set times ›Northern lightsActiveKp 4.7 now, up to 4.7 in the next 24 hours.Your chance tonight ›Space stationNext passChoose your city to see when the ISS passes over you.Live map ›
- India’s GSLV-F18 puts NVS-03 navigation satellite into its planned orbit
- Rubin doubles the known trailing Neptune Trojans, from two to four
- Canada’s Kutryk spends 7 hours 11 minutes outside the station on his first spacewalk
Next launches
The Sea God SurveysElectron · Rocket Lab
SpaceSail Polar Group TBD?Kinetica 2 · CAS Space
USSF-432Falcon 9 Block 5 · SpaceX
Latest News
Station’s new solar array is already unrolled, with one more due Nov. 5
Anil Menon and Joshua Kutryk spent 7 hours 11 minutes outside the station to attach a roll-out solar array. A final one goes up…
Hubble finds almost no sulfur around interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS
Hubble spectra from December 2025 and January 2026 show the coma of 3I/ATLAS holds far less sulfur than solar system comets, a…
NASA asks industry if a private spacecraft can lift Hubble out of its slow fall
NASA has issued a Request for Information on commercial options to raise Hubble's orbit, upgrade it or bring it down safely, with…
TRACERS first-year data: Magnetic reconnection mostly moves in space, not time
A first-year paper from NASA's twin TRACERS satellites finds that magnetic reconnection near Earth's polar cusp looks largely like a moving location,…
Sentinel-6B starts operational service, extending the sea-level record past 30 years
EUMETSAT says the Copernicus satellite is now in operational service, continuing the global sea-level record begun in 1992 and feeding weather and…
Voyager 1 will pass one light-day from the Sun on Nov. 18
NASA says Voyager 1 will cross the one-light-day mark on Nov. 18, 2026, 49 years after launch, at 16.1 billion miles from…
Featured
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…
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…
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…
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.…
ESA’s Moon line-up runs from landing cameras to a drill for water ice
ESA's new overview covers instruments and demonstrations on landers from several partners, aimed at safer landings,…
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…
Leaving Earth soon
Full launch schedule ›- NOV2Rocket LabThe Sea God SurveysElectron · Earth Sciencearound 16:00 UTC
- NOV3CAS SpaceSpaceSail Polar Group TBD?Kinetica 2 · Communicationsaround 00:00 UTC
- NOV3SpaceXUSSF-432Falcon 9 · Government/Top Secret01:42 UTC
- NOV4Agency for Defense DevelopmentDemo FlightMir · Test Flightaround 05:00 UTCOne to watch
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
Artemis III rocket is stacked in Florida, with a fueling test at the pad next
- Voyager 1 went silent for two days, then returned on its own
- Your name can fly to Titan on Dragonfly, but the sign-up closes Jan. 15
- Menon and Kutryk to fit a new roll-out solar array to the station’s port truss
Universe
A cat-shaped dust pillar in Carina, seen by Hubble and Webb
- NASA locks in UVEX: $590 million and a launch no later than January 2031
- A dead star has two rings of debris, and a glimpse of the Sun’s far future
- Webb finds thousands of newborn stars wrapped in smoky clouds of the Large Magellanic Cloud
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
A skull-shaped Antarctic island is losing its snow early, Landsat 9 images show
Landsat 9 images from March 2025 and October 2026 show a skull-like face on Vega Island, Antarctica, with far less…
A rose-colored Sahara rock turns out to be 4.1 billion-year-old Mars crust
Teghaza 001, found in the Sahara in 2022, is among the three oldest Martian meteorites and shows early Mars had…
Test pilot who set 25 speed records now runs NASA’s flight research center
Troy Asher, acting head of NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center since March, has the job permanently as the center works…
NIH and NASA offer up to $7.1 million for quantum sensors that could cut animal testing
The QuSAFE Challenge asks innovators to use quantum sensing on lab-grown human tissue models, aiming for safer drugs with fewer…
NASA’s 368-page ISAM guide now lists only hardware that exists, and industry is asking for it
NASA Langley's 2026 ISAM State of Play covers 11 capability areas in 368 pages, and admits only hardware that has…
Jupiter slows the solar wind in stages, unlike Earth, Juno data show
University of Iowa physicists report the most detailed look yet at Jupiter's bow shock, where the solar wind is slowed…
Three Norwegian firms win ESA deals to keep ships and drones on course under jamming
ESA signed three contracts in Oslo with Testnor, Norse Navigation and Rift Dynamics to build tools against GNSS jamming and…
Curtains of plasma wider than Britain may feed the Sun’s jets
A simulation study suggests the Sun's small, fast jets rise from rotating sheets of magnetized gas, which may also carry…