The Royal Academy of Engineering has announced the winners of The Princess Royal Silver Medal, one of the Royal Academy of Engineering’s most prestigious individual awards. Professor Robert Thomson FREng, Professor of Photonics at Heriot-Watt University, is receiving one of three 2026 awards for inventing the integrated photonic lantern. This lantern is a tool for…
For the first time, NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) mission has identified a planet orbiting a distant star thanks to ripples in space-time. Unlike the star-hugging transiting planets TESS regularly reveals, the newfound world is a super-Jupiter orbiting far from its host star. “When TESS launched, no one expected it to ever be capable…
Titan is the best place in the Solar System for flying. It could also be habitable to life as we know it. Learn more about this unusual, intriguing world in the ;latest episode of Planetary Radio, which features an interview with two leaders of NASA’s Dragonfly mission to Titan. Pictured: An artist’s impression of Dragonfly…
Back to Article List Today in the history of astronomy, Cassini arrives after a seven-year journey. Were they moons? Ears? Handles? Galileo couldn’t parse the rings of Saturn (seen in this Cassini-Huygens image from 2004). Credt: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute On July 1, 2004, the Cassini-Huygens mission, a collaborative undertaking by NASA, the European Space Agency…
NASA has picked more than 40 new space technology projects from U.S. companies, aiming to help build a long-term presence on the Moon and prepare for human missions to Mars. The agency will work with the companies through collaboration agreements instead of traditional contracts. Partnerships Instead of Contracts The 41 proposals come from 37 firms…
Back to Pic of the Day List Chirag Upreti from New York City Active region AR 4475, a cluster of sunspots that emerged June 22, drifts beside the broadcast mast of the Empire State Building. Sunspots are patches of intense magnetism on that Sun’s surface that are slightly cooler — and therefore not as bright…
The Starlink 17-45 mission lifts off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on June 25, 2026. Image: SpaceX Spacex launched another 24 satellites for its Starlink internet service from the West Coast Wednesday evening. Liftoff of the Starlink 17-45 mission from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California occurred at…
Back to Article List Today in the history of astronomy, the telescope mastermind is born. Best known for his quest to build larger and larger telescopes, George Ellery Hale helped shape institutions of astronomical research through the 19th and 20th centuries. Credit: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Born June 29, 1868, in Chicago, George Ellery…
Audio of this article is brought to you by the Air & Space Forces Association, honoring and supporting our Airmen, Guardians, and their families. Find out more at afa.org The cost of US military operations against Iran so far is $30 billion, the director of the Office of Management and Budget told Congress on June…
In an arid world of ice and snow, a glacier is ‘bleeding’. A deep red flow of water stains the white landscape surrounding it, remaining liquid even at temperatures well below freezing. And it’s been doing this for more than a century. This is Antarctica’s Blood Falls – and its internal world is even stranger…