If the black hole is spinning, it can generate strong jets that blast across thousands of light-years and shape entire galaxies. These black hole engines are thought to be powered by magnetic fields. For the first time, astronomers have detected magnetic fields just outside the event horizon of the black hole at the center of Read more about Event Horizon Telescope reveals magnetic fields at Milky Way’s central black hole[…]

Commercial spaceflight start-up Blue Origin has achieved a historic first by vertically landing and recovering the launcher stage of the New Shepard suborbital system after delivering a payload to space. Source: Historic touchdown for Blue Origin’s New Shepard space vehicle

Satellites are being weaponised, with the anti-satellite missles, manoevering satellites that can hit other objects and satellites that hack into feeds, giving false information to the receiver. Countriies have been holding on to a balance for ages, but in the last 10 or so years, countries have been gradually upping their game. Source: Satellite wars Read more about Satellite wars – an analysis of the arms race in space[…]

NASA took a significant step Friday toward expanding research opportunities aboard the International Space Station with its first mission order from Hawthorne, California based-company SpaceX to launch astronauts from U.S. soil. Source: NASA Orders SpaceX Crew Mission to International Space Station | NASA

Observations by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have taken advantage of gravitational lensing to reveal the largest sample of the faintest and earliest known galaxies in the Universe. Some of these galaxies formed just 600 million years after the Big Bang and are fainter than any other galaxy yet uncovered by Hubble. The team has Read more about Galaxies formed just after Big Bang viewed[…]

NASA’s Kepler mission has confirmed the first near-Earth-size planet in the “habitable zone” around a sun-like star. This discovery and the introduction of 11 other new small habitable zone candidate planets mark another milestone in the journey to finding another “Earth.” The newly discovered Kepler-452b is the smallest planet to date discovered orbiting in the Read more about NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to Earth[…]

Except Escape Dynamics didn’t fire its engine by setting alight fuel in a controlled explosion, like a traditional rocket. Instead, their engine fired using power beamed at it from a microwave antenna across the room. ]…] It aims to use a giant set of batteries to draw power from the regular electric grid (or on Read more about Rockets powered by microwave beams[…]

Stuff in Space is a realtime 3D map of objects in Earth orbit, visualized using WebGL. The website updates daily with orbit data from Space-Track.org and uses the excellent satellite.js Javascript library to calculate satellite positions. Source: Stuff in Space

Basically the US is saying that it’s the wild west out in space: if you can get there, you can mine your asteroid. Any asteroid resources obtained in outer space are the property of the entity that obtained such resources Source: Text of H.R. 1508: Space Resource Exploration and Utilization Act of 2015 (Introduced version) Read more about US Space Resource Exploration and Utilization Act of 2015[…]

The spacecraft broke up after being released from a carrier aircraft at high altitude, according to Ken Brown, a photographer who witnessed the plane breaking apart. One pilot was found dead inside the spacecraft and another parachuted out and was flown by helicopter to a hospital, Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood said. Friday’s flight marked Read more about Spaceship Two breaks up in flight[…]

A very cheap mission has managed to park into Mars Orbit first time, something never before done. Congratulations India! ISRO: Mars Orbiter Mission.

at 4,268px × 5,690px it’s a huge starship guide featuring hundreds of spacecraft to scale. Size Comparison – Science Fiction Spaceships by DirkLoechel on deviantART.

How did the Moon form? According to the prevailing hypothesis, a Mars-sized body known as Theia smashed into Earth. Herwartz et al. analyzed fresh basalt samples from three Apollo landing sites and compared them with several samples of Earth’s mantle. The oxygen isotope values measured in these lunar rocks differ significantly from the terrestrial material, Read more about Evidence that the moon was formed by impact between Earth and planet Theia[…]

Very quickly! Will it only be a few decades until it’s gone? HubbleSite – NewsCenter – Hubble Shows that Jupiter's Great Red Spot Is Smaller than Ever Seen Before (05/15/2014) – Introduction.

Last month, physicists used this idea to build the world’s first entanglement-enhanced microscope that dramatically increases its resolution over purely classical instruments. They created entangled photons and used one to illuminate the object. The second photon can then give them information about the first that they use to increase the resolution of the resulting image. Read more about How To Build A Quantum Telescope[…]

Gravitational waves squeeze space as they travel, and this squeezing produces a distinct pattern in the cosmic microwave background. Gravitational waves have a “handedness,” much like light waves, and can have left- and right-handed polarizations. “The swirly B-mode pattern is a unique signature of gravitational waves because of their handedness. This is the first direct Read more about First direct evidence of cosmic inflation[…]

This book addresses the simple and complex issues that have been identified through the development of space elevator concepts over the last decade. The report begins with a summary of those ideas in Edwards’ and Westling’s book The Space Elevator (2003). Out of these beginnings has risen a worldwide cadre focused upon their areas of Read more about Space Elevators: An Assessment of the Technological Feasibility and the Way Forward[…]

2 california companies are launching swarms of satellites to low orbit to bring near real time imagery of the entire world. http://gizmodo.com/how-swarms-of-tiny-satellites-are-creating-a-real-time-1497890594

Of the 150,000 stars in our Milky Way galaxy snapped by the NASA probe in the past three years, more than 3,000 planets have been identified. Scientists then focused on the stars similar to our Sun and tried to find planets between one and two times the size of Earth in those stars’ Goldilocks orbital Read more about 22% of sunlike stars could house water[…]

And this is how they actually get their names – pretty boring, but to be expected from the guys who declared Pluto a non-planet… Naming of Astronomical Objects | IAU.

There are a few new space elevator ideas coming along, one is a kickstarter project, another from Tokyo. They want to build one on the moon too! Space elevator ideas rising again – Cosmic Log.

It’s the fifth moon they’ve discovered. Pluto stays a planet in my book. New Moon Discovered in Our Solar System.

NASA has contracted this rocket to very carefully approach the ISS for resupply runs. Well done Elon Musk! SpaceX Dragon, first private ship to the ISS, launched successfully • The Register.