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Space-weather sentinels, commercial lunar missions, and lots of planetary flybys are on tap this year. IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe) will be launched in 2025.NASA / Johns Hopkins APL / Princeton University / Steve Gribben Get ready for another busy year in spaceflight 2025. Of course, 2024 was an amazing year, as NASA’s Europa […]
An artist’s conception of Parker at perihelion. NASA NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is about to go where no spacecraft has gone before. A final flyby of Venus last month has sped up Parker for the mission’s next solar perihelion, set to occur on December 24 at 6:40 EST / 11:40 UT. At just 6.2 million […]
Io, the innermost of Jupiter’s four largest Galilean moons, is covered with hundreds of volcanoes, some shooting lava fountains dozens of miles high. But what kind of interior could drive this magma fury? After NASA’s Juno orbiter made two close flyovers of Io, planetary scientists now think they know. Ever since Voyager 1 discovered erupting […]
On September 27, 2024, as NASA’s Perseverance rover scaled the western rim of Jezero on Mars, it paused to look back to create a panorama of the crater’s floor. Tracks in the foreground showed that the rover struggled — and sometimes slipped — while ascending the rim’s steep slope. Click here to explore the entire […]
Lucy flies past Earth, in this artist’s conception.NASA An exciting mission is about to re-visit our fair planet this week on Thursday night/Friday morning, as NASA’s Lucy spacecraft passes Earth in a bid to pick up speed. The gravitational assist will have Lucy fly by around 11:15 p.m. EST on December 12th (4:15 Universal Time […]
A Geminid fireball competes with the waning gibbous Moon on December 11, 2022. Moonlight will affect this year’s shower as well.Eliot Herman It’s a tough year for the Geminids. The annual meteor shower butts up against the nearly full Moon when it reaches maximum on the night of December 13-14. The official peak is forecast […]
An artist’s conception of the Proba 3 mission in space. ESA The rare spectacle of a total solar eclipse offers us a chance to see the elusive solar corona in person. But this moment is fleeting, making this region near the dazzling Sun poorly understood. Now, the European Space Agency (ESA) has launched Proba 3, […]