Space & Time

On 19 March 2025, the European Space Agency’s Euclid mission releases its first batch of survey data, including a preview of its deep fields. Here, hundreds of thousands of galaxies in different shapes and sizes take center stage and show a glimpse of their large-scale organization in the cosmic web.

The James Webb Space Telescope has directly observed the key chemical of carbon dioxide in planets outside of our solar system for the first time, scientists announced Monday.

On March 11, NASA launched a new space telescope into orbit to explore the origins of the universe. The mission will use sophisticated software, developed at the Arizona Cosmology Lab at the University of Arizona, to analyze data and help astronomers understand what happened in the first trillionth of a second after the Big Bang.

Three NASA-funded rockets are set to launch from Poker Flat Research Range in Fairbanks, Alaska, in an experiment that seeks to reveal how auroral substorms affect the behavior and composition of Earth’s far upper atmosphere.

Nearly 30 former NASA astronauts have signed a letter endorsing Jared Isaacman as the agency’s next administrator, calling on the Senate to consider his nomination as soon as possible. The post Former NASA astronauts endorse Isaacman as administrator appeared first on SpaceNews.

Star Catcher Industries said it beamed concentrated solar energy over 100 meters March 21 to satellite solar arrays on the ground at EverBank Stadium, Florida, in its first demo of a capability planned for space. The post Star Catcher completes first ground test for space power beaming service appeared first on SpaceNews.

Scientists have long sought to determine the age of the moon’s South Pole–Aitken (SPA) basin, the largest and oldest known impact crater on the lunar surface. Recently, a research team led by Prof. Chen Yi from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences has dated the formation of the basin to 4.25 billion years ago by analyzing the first-ever rock samples returned from the SPA basin by China’s Chang’e-6 mission.

Somehow, we all know how a warp drive works. You’re in your spaceship and you need to get to another star. So you press a button or flip a switch or pull a lever and your ship just goes fast. Like really fast. Faster than the speed of light. Fast enough that you can get to your next destination by the end of the next commercial break.

The Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), currently under construction in northern Chile, will give us a better view of the Milky Way than any ground-based telescope before it. It’s difficult to overstate how transformative it will be.

Dark energy is a mystery so daunting that it stretches and strains our most robust theories. The universe is expanding, driven by the unknown force that we’ve named Dark Energy. Dark Energy is also accelerating the rate of expansion. If scientists could figure out why, it would open up a whole new avenue of understanding.

A NASA spacecraft will make another close brush with the sun, the second of three planned encounters through the sizzling solar atmosphere.

A terrifying glimpse at one potential fate of our Milky Way galaxy has come to light thanks to the discovery of a cosmic anomaly that challenges our understanding of the universe.

Additive manufacturing, also known as 3D printing, is regularly used on the ground to quickly produce a variety of devices. Adapting this process for space could let crew members create tools and parts for maintenance and repair of equipment on the spot, rather than trying to bring along every item that might be needed.

The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory’s (NRL) Narrow Field Imager (NFI) was launched into space aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as a part of NASA’s Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission on March 11 and deployed from Falcon 9 on March 12.

Video: 00:02:46 The high-performance computing (HPC) environment will be available for scientific research and technological development activities, supporting all ESA programmes as well as the researchers and small- and medium-enterprises from Member States.

On June 5, 2024, astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams embarked on a brief mission to the International Space Station. But equipment failures turned what was supposed to be an eight-day trip into a grueling 9-month spaceflight.

Week in images: 17-21 March 2025 Discover our week through the lens

Video: 00:09:13 Meet Andrea Patassa—test pilot, aviator, passionate outdoor adventurer, and Member of ESA’s Astronaut Reserve. In this miniseries, we take you on a journey through the ESA Astronaut Reserve, diving into the first part of their Astronaut Reserve Training (ART) at the European Astronaut Centre (EAC) near Cologne, Germany. Our “ARTists” are immersing themselves in everything from ESA and the International Space Station programme to the European space industry and institutions. They’re gaining hands-on experience in technical skills like spacecraft systems and robotics, alongside human behaviour, scientific lessons, scuba diving, and survival training. ESA’s Astronaut Reserve Training programme is all about building Europe’s next generation of space explorers—preparing them for the opportunities of future missions in Earth orbit and beyond. This interview was recorded in November 2024. You can also listen to this episode on all major podcast platforms. Keep exploring with ESA Explores! 

The geopolitical landscape is shifting beneath our feet as the United States recalibrates its global strategy. This strategic pivot carries profound implications not just for conventional U.S. military force posture The post America’s space strategy in a changing Middle East appeared first on SpaceNews.

Image: Inner space engineering

By 2030, Space Industries plans to assemble, integrate and test more than 220 satellites annually in a 3,000-square-meter clean room. The post Space Industries sets ambitious goals for satellite assembly, integration and testing appeared first on SpaceNews.

The European Space Agency has released a strategy for its next 15 years that includes a greater emphasis on autonomy amid broader geopolitical changes. The post ESA releases strategy document that emphasizes autonomy appeared first on SpaceNews.

Image: The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains.

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument used millions of galaxies and quasars to build the largest 3D map of our universe to date. Combining their data with other experiments shows signs that the impact of dark energy may be weakening over time — and the standard model of how the universe works may need an update.

French satellite broadband startup CTO has teamed up with TDF, which operates France’s largest network of carrier-neutral hosting sites, to help integrate its proposed VLEO 5G services with terrestrial telcos. The post French VLEO 5G startup strikes telecoms infrastructure partnership appeared first on SpaceNews.

The U.S. Space Force will operate with $28.7 billion in funding for fiscal year 2025, $800 million less than its requested budget of $29.5 billion The post U.S. Space Force budget trimmed in full-year continuing resolution appeared first on SpaceNews.

As civilizations become more and more advanced, their power needs also increase. It’s likely that an advanced civilization might need so much power that they enclose their host star in solar energy-collecting satellites. These Dyson swarms will trap heat so any planets within the sphere are likely to experience a temperature increase. A new paper explores this and concludes that a complete Dyson swarm outside the orbit of Earth would raise our temperature by 140 K.

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a sparkling spiral galaxy paired with a prominent star, both in the constellation Virgo. While the galaxy and the star appear to be close to one another, even overlapping, they’re actually a great distance apart. The star, marked with four long diffraction spikes, is in our own galaxy. It’s just 7,109 light-years away from Earth. The galaxy, named NGC 4900, lies about 45 million light-years from Earth.

ESA’s Euclid space telescope has been providing valuable data from the depths of space for almost two years. With its help, the largest and most accurate 3D map of the universe to date is to be created, with billions of stars and galaxies. The data from Euclid is analyzed by the international Euclid consortium, which also includes the research teams of Francine Marleau and Tim Schrabback at the University of Innsbruck.

Interstellar objects are among the last unexplored classes of solar system objects, holding tantalizing information about primitive materials from exoplanetary star systems. They pass through our solar system only once in their lifetime at speeds of tens of kilometers per second, making them elusive.

We know that regular supernovas pose no existential threat to life on Earth in the near-term. But there are other varieties of supernova that are a little bit harder to predict, and a little bit harder to spot.

Up for a challenge? If skies are clear, you may be able to complete a rare feat of visual athletics this coming weekend, and follow Venus on its trek from the evening into the morning sky.

Astronomers have detected oxygen in the most distant known galaxy, JADES-GS-z14-0. This record-breaking detection is making astronomers rethink how quickly galaxies formed in the early Universe.

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) is mapping millions of celestial objects to better understand dark energy—the mysterious driver of our universe’s accelerating expansion. Today, the DESI collaboration released a new collection of data for anyone in the world to investigate.

In this week’s episode of Space Minds, Richard DalBello, Principal, RDB Space sits down with host David Ariosto. The post Making the rules for the final frontier appeared first on SpaceNews.

The chemical element sulfur is essential for all lifeforms and is a building block of proteins and amino acids. By studying sulfur-based molecules in space, scientists are working to understand the chemical processes that might have led to the formation of life on Earth.

Venus will pass between the Earth and sun on Saturday during what’s called an inferior conjunction.

Two different teams of astronomers have detected oxygen in the most distant known galaxy, JADES-GS-z14-0. The discovery, reported in two separate studies, was made possible thanks to the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is a partner. This record-breaking detection is making astronomers rethink how quickly galaxies formed in the early universe.

ESA’s Strategy 2040 Read the Five Goals

Using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), Chinese astronomers have detected a new ultra-faint dwarf galaxy, which turned out to be gas-rich. The finding was reported in a research paper published March 12 on the preprint server arXiv.

The universe has been expanding ever since the Big Bang almost 14 billion years ago, and astronomers believe a kind of invisible force called dark energy is making it accelerate faster.

Satellite operators need better space weather models to maximize the life of their satellites and to avoid collisions in low Earth orbit. The post Satellite operators want better space weather models appeared first on SpaceNews.

More accurate maps based on data from the SWOT mission can improve underwater navigation and result in greater knowledge of how heat and life move around the world’s oceans.

After the safe return Tuesday of two astronauts left behind for months on the International Space Station, the White House characterized the pair as “stranded” and trumpeted their return as a “rescue.” Those are words that NASA has been resisting for months.

NASA is evaluating options for another test flight of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner commercial crew vehicle before beginning regular ISS missions. The post NASA examining options for another Starliner test flight appeared first on SpaceNews.

Dark energy makes up roughly 70% of the universe, yet we know nothing about it.

Dark energy, the mysterious force thought to be driving the ever-faster expansion of the universe, appears to be changing over time, according to new observations released Wednesday.

Scientists are homing in on the nature of a mysterious force called dark energy, and nothing short of the fate of the universe hangs in the balance.

On 19 March 2025, the European Space Agency’s Euclid mission releases its first batch of survey data, including a preview of its deep fields. Here, hundreds of thousands of galaxies in different shapes and sizes take center stage and show a glimpse of their large-scale organization in the cosmic web.

HELSINKI — A Chinese space company is setting its sights on crewed orbital spaceflight, marking a new step in the expansion of China’s commercial space sector. Zhang Xiaomin, chairman of The post Chinese company targets crewed orbital spaceflight appeared first on SpaceNews.

“The Space Force recognizes the critical role that data and artificial intelligence will play in maintaining space superiority” The post Space Force unveils strategic plan for AI integration appeared first on SpaceNews.

Exlabs and Antares announced a strategic partnership March 19 to develop a nuclear-powered spacecraft for deep-space missions. The post Exlabs and Antares form alliance to develop nuclear-powered spacecraft appeared first on SpaceNews.

On 19 March 2025, the European Space Agency’s Euclid mission released its first batch of survey data, including a preview of its deep fields. Here, hundreds of thousands of galaxies in different shapes and sizes take centre stage and show a glimpse of their large-scale organisation in the cosmic web.

A Crew Dragon spacecraft returned four people from the ISS March 18, including two NASA astronauts whose extended stay became entangled in controversy. The post Crew-9 returns from space station appeared first on SpaceNews.

Indian edge computing startup SkyServe is working with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to test artificial intelligence models on a D-Orbit satellite. The post SkyServe tests AI models with JPL and D-Orbit appeared first on SpaceNews.

A group of European companies has secured government funds to test an inflatable drag sail in space by 2028, designed to swiftly deorbit its host satellite after mission completion. The post Europe funds inflatable satellite drag sail demonstration appeared first on SpaceNews.

Colorado Springs, CO (March 18, 2025) – Frontgrade Technologies, a leading provider of high-reliability electronic solutions for space and national security missions, today announced its acquisition of IDSI, LLC, the The post Frontgrade Grows Aerospace and Defense Amplifier Capabilities with Acquisition of Crescend Technologies’ Defense Solutions Division appeared first on SpaceNews.

Guetlein: “We are looking at offloading some of our legacy capabilities to commercial, or to our allies” The post Space Force prepared to divest legacy systems in favor of market-ready solutions appeared first on SpaceNews.

NGA has restored Ukraine’s access to the Global Enhanced GEOINT Delivery system The post U.S. restores satellite imagery support to Ukraine amid ceasefire tensions appeared first on SpaceNews.

Physicists have measured a nuclear reaction that can occur in neutron star collisions, providing direct experimental data for a process that had previously only been theorised. The study provides new insight into how the universe’s heaviest elements are forged — and could even drive advancements in nuclear reactor physics.