ESA’s Hera mission has captured images of asteroids (1126) Otero and (18805) Kellyday. Though distant and faint, the early observations serve as both a successful instrument test and a demonstration of agile spacecraft operations that could prove useful for planetary defence.

Hera is currently travelling through space on its way to a binary asteroid system. In 2022, NASA’s DART spacecraft impacted the asteroid Dimorphos, changing its orbit around the larger asteroid Didymos. Now, Hera is returning to the system to help turn asteroid deflection into a reliable technique for planetary defence.

Europe’s first MetOp Second Generation, MetOp-SG-A1, weather satellite – which hosts Copernicus Sentinel-5 as part of its instrument package – is set for liftoff on an Ariane 6 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on 13 August 2025 at 02:37 CEST (12 August 21:37 Kourou time).

Watch live on ESA Web TV One.

In its latest postcard from Mars, the European Space Agency’s Mars Express returns to Acheron Fossae: a dramatic network of chasms carved into the surface of the Red Planet.

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Aug 05, 2025
EchoStar Corporation has chosen MDA Space as the prime contractor to develop the world's first 3GPP 5G-compliant low Earth orbit (LEO) direct-to-device (D2D) satellite constellation built on Open RAN architecture. The contract launches MDA Space into full-scale production of its software-defined MDA AURORA D2D satellites for a non-terrestrial network (NTN) expected to redefine global mobile conn

Fairbanks AK (SPX) Aug 05, 2025
Years of preparation by the Alaska Satellite Facility will ensure that a flood of freely available data from a NASA-India satellite mission that launched Wednesday will be easy for the global public to use. "Most of what we've been working on for the past eight years is preparing for NISAR," Alaska Satellite Facility Director Wade Albright said prior to the launch. The Alaska Satelli

Paris, France (SPX) Aug 05, 2025
Webb has returned to the iconic Hubble Ultra Deep Field, providing astronomers with an unprecedented mid-infrared perspective of one of the most studied regions in the sky. Using nearly 100 hours of observation time with its Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has delivered its deepest extragalactic view in a single filter to date. This area, known a

Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Aug 05, 2025
Black holes, the most gravitationally extreme objects in the universe, emit space-time ripples called quasinormal modes when disturbed - vibrations that can be detected as gravitational waves. These signals offer critical insight into a black hole's mass and structure, but precisely modeling the rapidly fading ones has remained elusive. In a breakthrough study, Kyoto University researchers

Austin TX (SPX) Aug 05, 2025
he first black hole images stunned the world in 2019, with headlines announcing evidence of a glowing doughnut-shaped object from the center of galaxy Messier 87 (M87 - 55 million light years from Earth. Supercomputer simulations are now helping scientists sharpen their understanding about the environment beyond a black hole's 'shadow,' material just outside its event horizon. "Ever since

Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Aug 05, 2025
China has approved the ninth round of lunar sample lending applications, distributing over 30 grams of moon material to 32 research teams across 25 institutions. These samples, retrieved by the Chang'e 5 and Chang'e 6 missions, will support a broad spectrum of scientific studies. According to the Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering Center, 30,881.8 milligrams of lunar samples will be s

Tokyo Japan (SPX) Aug 05, 2025
ispace, inc. has signed an agreement with Bridgestone Corporation to jointly develop and evaluate tires for future small and medium-sized lunar rovers. The initiative aims to accelerate practical deployment of these tires for surface missions by the end of this decade. Under the agreement, Bridgestone's soft, elastic tires - engineered with thin metal spokes for both durability and flexibi