Washington DC (UPI) May 1, 2025
SpaceX launched 28 V2 Internet satellites into low-Earth orbit from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Thursday night, adding to its fleet of nearly 7,300 orbitals already in space. The Falcon 9 rocket carrying the payload was launched just after 6:51 p.m. EDT. It was the 18th mission for the first-stage fuel booster, which landed on the drone ship Just Read the Ins

Paris, France (SPX) May 02, 2025
Gaia, the European Space Agency's star-mapping mission, has revealed a peculiar family of stars unlike any seen before. Discovered using Gaia's third data release, the group, named Ophion, contains more than 1,000 young stars that are unexpectedly on the verge of rapid and chaotic dispersal across the Milky Way. Typically, stellar families form in clusters, with stars born in close proximi

Sydney, Australia (SPX) May 02, 2025
The latest batch of experimental samples from China's Tiangong space station has safely returned to Earth, totaling approximately 37.25 kilograms and spanning 25 scientific investigations. Delivered by the Shenzhou-19 return capsule, this marks the eighth consignment of space station research materials. The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) reported that the experiments covered space life

Los Angeles CA (SPX) May 02, 2025
NASA's SPHEREx space telescope has officially launched into its primary science mission, capturing around 3,600 infrared images daily to produce an unprecedented full-sky map. Following its March 11 launch, SPHEREx completed a six-week phase of checkouts and calibrations. On May 1, it began operations aimed at capturing high-resolution data on hundreds of millions of galaxies. The two-year

Los Angeles CA (SPX) May 02, 2025
Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT] has finalized assembly and testing of NASA's Orion spacecraft for the Artemis II mission, officially transferring the vehicle to NASA's Exploration Ground Systems (EGS) team. This handover marks a major milestone in NASA's campaign to return humans to the Moon and lay the groundwork for eventual crewed missions to Mars. Designed for deep space exploration, Orion

Image: The Ocean and Land Colour Instrument on Copernicus Sentinel-3 captured this image of Earth’s biggest iceberg, A23a, on 5 April 2025.

Week in images: 28 April - 02 May 2025

Discover our week through the lens

As the new Biomass satellite settles into life in orbit following its launch on 29 April, ESA has released its most extensive satellite-based maps of above-ground forest carbon to date. Spanning nearly two decades, the dataset offers the clearest global picture yet of how forest carbon stocks have changed over time.

Developed through ESA’s Climate Change Initiative, this new long-term record integrates data from multiple satellite missions – and will soon be further enhanced by data from the Biomass mission itself.

Mapping the descent of a lunar lander, using nothing but data from an ‘event camera’ – this is the next challenge presented to the space community by the European Space Agency’s Advanced Concepts Team (ACT).

Sydney, Australia (SPX) Apr 30, 2025
China's Shenzhou XIX crew has officially handed over control of the Tiangong space station to the incoming Shenzhou XX crew, marking another milestone in the nation's growing space ambitions. Following the successful completion of their mission objectives, the Shenzhou XIX astronauts are now preparing to return to Earth. The Tiangong space station, which has seen multiple crewed missions o