The urgent radio calls by the air traffic controllers at the Federal Aviation Administration office in Puerto Rico started to go out on Thursday evening as a SpaceX test flight exploded and debris began to rain toward the Caribbean. Flights near Puerto Rico needed to avoid passing through the area — or risk being hit … Read more
During his Inaugural Address on Monday, President Donald J. Trump again promised to launch American astronauts to Mars. Seated nearby, Elon Musk, a political benefactor of Mr. Trump who founded SpaceX in the hope that it would one day be able to send colonists to Mars, beamed with enthusiasm and offered two thumbs up. The … Read more
For a few months last fall, a school-bus-size space rock named 2024 PT5 gained fame as Earth’s new “mini-moon.” Astronomers rushed to study the object while it was still close enough to Earth to observe in detail. Now, one team has concluded that 2024 PT5 is a chunk of the real moon. The rock was … Read more
In a post on X on Tuesday evening, Elon Musk said President Trump had asked his rocket company SpaceX to bring home “as soon as possible” two NASA astronauts who have been on the International Space Station since June. SpaceX, in fact, is already scheduled to bring those two astronauts home, but no earlier than … Read more
You may hear about a large asteroid headed toward Earth. Don’t panic. Just after Christmas Day, astronomers spotted something zipping away from Earth: a rock somewhere between 130 feet and 330 feet long that they named 2024 YR4. Over the next few weeks, they simulated its possible future orbits. They now say, based on the … Read more