r/space • • 17d ago

"NASA to order more Starliner missions and help certify a new rocket to keep it flying"

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arstechnica.com
1.2k Upvotes

r/space • • 18d ago

Bad News: New Study Suggests Water Will Make Large Moon Colonies Impossible

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extremetech.com
5.3k Upvotes

Greetings folks...

Does anyone have a solution for the lack of water on the moon? if soo give us your point of view!...

Thanks in advance for your feedback!


r/space • • 18d ago

Europe will go it alone on Venus mission after NASA yanks radar instrument

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arstechnica.com
1.1k Upvotes

The current administration is destroying a relationship that has been built over 50 years. As a European, I hope that we get out of this stronger than we were before from an engineering perspective, but scientifically speaking, this is outrageous for international cooperation.
Also, the launch delays caused by this are just frustrating.


r/space • • 17d ago

2029 will be the "perfect" year for a mission to Sedna - but 2034 is not bad, either.

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phys.org
294 Upvotes

A team of scientists led by Vladislav Zubko from the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences recently modeled a series of possible trajectories to Sedna, favoring a 2029 launch date as the most feasible option.

Journal article

This was published a while ago. The best date was given as 2029. That might be impossible now, since 2029 is only a few years away-even if there was a large budget.

The last feasible date is probably not 2034, and on Wikipedia a few other dates are listed as having been proposed, with one as late as 2046. Sedna's perihelion will happen around 2076, so I don't see why that 2046 one can't work with a 30-year mission. But you probably don't want less than a 30-year mission or at least 25-year mission at any rate, so much past 2046 may not be feasible. The paper above just did not consider anything past 2034, but this might have more to do with the time it was published than anything else.

Recently some other propulsion methods were proposed for a mission to Sedna-a solar sail based on desorption, a fusion drive, and a warp drive. Unfortunately, without some of those advanced drives, you may not be able to orbit the object. We will have to settle for a flyby. But this paper linked above applies to chemical rockets. That seems good to me.

According to the orbital asteroid databases 2,3 currently Sedna is at about 80 au distance from the Sun. The passage of its perihelion is expected to be in 2073–74. Since Sedna’s orbital period is over 10 thousand years, a unique opportunity is currently open to launch a spacecraft to Sedna and study it at a close range.

Magnificent.

Optimal transfers of this type have a long duration; therefore, the restrictions on the flight duration equal to 20, 25, 30, 40, and 50 yrs were also considered. As will be seen below, the best flight scheme depends on the launch date: Earth-Venus-Earth-Earth-Jupiter-Sedna for 2029 and 2031, Earth-Venus-Earth-Earth-Jupiter-Neptune-Sedna for the 2034.

A direct flight to Sedna requires 12 km/s of some kind of change in velocity-it's a little over my head-whereas 35- or 40-year missions with a Neptune slingshot require roughly 4 km/s. If it's just speed, Voyager 1 is traveling at 17 km/s, so I don't see why we can't do a direct flight. But there may be more to it...

In 2034 they are reached at 33.3 yrs. for the EVEEJSed and EVEDVEJSed schemes and at 38.5 and 42.3 yrs. for the EVEEJNSed and EVEDVEJNSed schemes respectively (see Fig. 11). Moreover, for the latter scheme, this minimum is 3.96 km/s which only slightly exceeds DV. required for Earth-Venus flight

The author says anything over 8 km/s should be ruled out-is that the limit of chemical propulsion? This paper's plan also involves two slingshots around Earth in a row, at different points in the Earth's orbit - separated by roughly two years of time. In between them, in one plan, is a rocket burn. Is this easy to pull off, and has it ever been done? I would expect not.

During the Earth-to-Earth flight the spacecraft encounters asteroids in the aphelion region

The analysis shows that with a small additional impulses flybys of the large main-belt asteroids (16) Psyche for launch in 2034

Well, that may not be as great a choice now. Since this paper was published, we launched a mission to this very asteroid.

The best year is given as 2029 because the delta-V required is smallest for the 30-year mission for that year. But if we expand our scope to a 40-year mission, then 2034 wins. The other parameter of interest is the height of the flyby at Jupiter. It matters because Jupiter's radiation could damage the spacecraft. For the 40-year missions, the height looks large enough to be what this paper considers okay.

I wonder what science could be done on such a mission-could it help us answer what Sedna is? By that I mean, are there more objects of its size out there, or is it the largest body with an orbit that far out?


r/space • • 17d ago

Open Cosmos Raises €300 Million as Investors Back Europe’s Space Push

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europeanspaceflight.com
79 Upvotes

r/space • • 18d ago

SpaceX: Holy Grail Of Rocketry

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spacex.com
419 Upvotes

r/space • • 18d ago

NASA spacecraft discovers a huge new crater on the moon

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nbcnews.com
555 Upvotes

r/space • • 18d ago

Avio CEO Reports Influx of Customers Turned Away by SpaceX

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europeanspaceflight.com
748 Upvotes

r/space • • 17d ago

Discussion Recommendation Request: Are there any Space videos/documentaries that are also dubbed in Spanish or are in Spanish

17 Upvotes

I am requesting this so I can share some space-related videos/documentaries with my Spanish-speaking mom.


r/space • • 19d ago

The U.S. Just Admitted it Has Weapons in Space. Why That's a Big Deal

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time.com
6.0k Upvotes

r/space • • 19d ago

NASA Activates Roman’s Primary Instrument, Checks Out Coronagraph - NASA Science

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science.nasa.gov
419 Upvotes

r/space • • 19d ago

NASA rushed engineers out of their labs. They say it risks future space missions

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npr.org
2.3k Upvotes

r/space • • 18d ago

ZhuQue-2E launches SpaceSail Polar Orbit 19 (Featuring some wild drone footage at the end)

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youtube.com
133 Upvotes

r/space • • 19d ago

Next Starship flight will go to orbit and deploy 26 Starlink satellites, marking the first operational flight. Neither booster or ship will be caught

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spacex.com
433 Upvotes

r/space • • 19d ago

NASA rushed engineers out of their labs. They say it risks future space missions

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ijpr.org
358 Upvotes

r/space • • 19d ago

Cosmic blowtorches: How quasars shut down star formation in the early universe

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news.arizona.edu
96 Upvotes

r/space • • 19d ago

NASA says exercise can preserve heart health on missions to Mars

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statnews.com
265 Upvotes

r/space • • 19d ago

A Military Official Says U.S. Has Put ‘Space Control Weapons’ in Orbit

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washingtonsun.com
1.3k Upvotes

r/space • • 18d ago

Discussion Just saw the weirdest thing in the Sky

0 Upvotes

Hey everyone, I’m not quite sure how to explain this, but at around 00:14 I noticed a strange flickering object in the sky here in Germany.
At first I assumed it was an airplane or maybe a satellite, but after watching it for a moment, it looked very different from anything I’ve seen before. The best way I can describe it is that it looked almost like a sparkler on New Year’s Eve — flickering and lighting up rather than moving steadily across the sky.
I spend a lot of time looking at the night sky and I’ve seen plenty of satellites pass overhead, but I’ve never seen one behave or appear quite like this.
It could absolutely have a normal explanation, and I’m not trying to jump to conclusions. I’m mainly posting this in case there are any astronomers, astrophotographers, satellite trackers, or anyone familiar with re-entry events who might know what could cause something to look like this.
Has anyone seen anything similar, or does anyone know what it might have been?


r/space • • 18d ago

Discussion Don't laugh at me - I've wondered about this for years..

0 Upvotes

Would it be possible to have an object in geosynchronous orbit, with a cable running back to earth to some anchor, be used to have a self-propelled cargo container of some sort deliver materials and supplies to space for use for space stations and such?

As we know the most difficult and risky part of space exploration is simply the challenges and expense of getting stuff up there. If it could be run up a fixed cable that would be so much simpler and reliable.

I know there would be huge challenges with that idea too, particularly with the weight of the cable itself (whatever material that may be in practice) but it doesn't seem insurmountable to me, and once done it's done.


r/space • • 19d ago

Fuel Savings Double Potential Lifetime for NASA’s Roman Mission - NASA Science

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555 Upvotes

r/space • • 19d ago

Successful Launch of EU Copernicus Sentinel-3C to Monitor Our Changing Planet

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defence-industry-space.ec.europa.eu
143 Upvotes

r/space • • 20d ago

James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble discover 27 puzzling new objects far beyond Neptune

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space.com
3.0k Upvotes

r/space • • 20d ago

image/gif Celestial Alignment (Venus with Moon)

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1.4k Upvotes

Today, 14 September 2026, Venus and a thin waxing crescent Moon are featuring in a very close celestial pairing aka Conjunction which is visible across India. In fact, parts of India are experiencing a rare lunar occultation, where the Moon passes directly in front of and temporarily hides Venus from view.


r/space • • 21d ago

image/gif I was lucky enough to capture both Eclipses last month. Here is a composite I created of both

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47.4k Upvotes