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ESA's Solar Orbiter sneaks in bonus science by choking on the dust of a comet tail (again)

Plucky probe due to make closest pass to the Sun in March

26 Jan 17:59 | 1

It's more than 20 years since Steps topped the charts. It could be less than that for STEP's first fusion energy

Anyone fancy a spherical tokamak in their backyard?

26 Jan 12:33 | 53

James Webb Space Telescope has arrived at its new home – an orbit almost a million miles from Earth

Funnily enough, that's where we want to be right now, too

25 Jan 08:35 | 53

Rolls-Royce consortium shopping for factory sites to build mini-nuclear reactors

Hunt follows £210m government funding in small modular reactor model

24 Jan 15:09 | 117

IBM forges entanglement to double quantum simulations by 'cutting up a larger circuit into smaller circuits'

Littler circuits executing on smaller hardware and tolerating 'a lot more noise'

24 Jan 13:35 | 6

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away... a massive black hole spewed out gases that probably helped make stars

As it destroys so it creates

24 Jan 11:47 | 14

Almost there: James Webb Space Telescope frees its mirrors and prepares for insertion

Freed of launch restraints, mirror segments can waggle at will

21 Jan 19:06 | 68

Joint European Torus celebrates 100,000 pulses: Neither Brexit nor middle age has stopped '80s era experiment

Fusion energy projects nearing 40th anniversary

21 Jan 14:29 | 38

NASA's gamma-ray-burst alert satellite put into safe mode after suspected reaction wheel failure

To be fair, this is after 17 years of service in space

21 Jan 00:31 | 6

SpaceX Starlink sat streaks now present in nearly a fifth of all astronomical images snapped by Caltech telescope

Annoying, maybe – but totally ruining this science, maybe not

20 Jan 00:49 | 25

NASA's Curiosity finds signs of ancient life on Mars. Or maybe not. More data needed

Rover heats up samples, sniffs carbon signature associated with biological processes on Earth

19 Jan 13:13 | 27

ESA boss gives update on stricken Sentinel-1B imaging satellite: All is not lost yet

Still borked, 1C and 1D are waiting in the wings

19 Jan 06:32 | 5

European Space Agency whittles wannabe astronauts down from 23,000 to 1,391

Could there be a South Korean TV show somewhere in this?

18 Jan 15:29 | 10

Move over exoplanets, exomoons are the next big thing

Is that an extremely large moon we see outside the solar system, astro-boffins ask themselves

17 Jan 15:25 | 23

Alien life on Super-Earth can survive longer than us due to long-lasting protection from cosmic rays

Laser experiments show their magnetic fields shielding their surfaces from radiation last longer

15 Jan 09:09 | 76

Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne rocket deploys seven satellites with third successful mission

Paperwork needs sorting for a launch from the UK

14 Jan 19:28 | 14

NASA's Mars InSight trips into safe mode and ESA's Sentinel-1B gives scientists the silent treatment

12 Jan 17:01 | 22

North Korea says it's launched a third hypersonic missile, this time reaching Mach 10

South Korea piqued as FAA grounds west coast aircraft

12 Jan 11:43 | 27

Massive rugby ball-shaped planet emerges from scrum of space 'scope sightings

It was worth a try

12 Jan 06:23 | 41

European Space Agency: Come on, hack our satellite if you think you're hard enough

Space: The final frontier for cybersecurity

11 Jan 17:15 | 16

Popular

Saved by the Bill: What if... Microsoft had killed Windows 95?

Now this looks like a job for me, 'cos we need a little, controversy... 'Cos it feels so NT, without me

Machine needs more Learning: Google Drive dings single-character files for copyright infringement

If you're unable to share documents, this may be why

Linux distros haunted by Polkit-geist for 12+ years: Bug grants root access to any user

What happens when argc is zero and a SUID program doesn't care? Let's find out!

Microsoft's do-it-all IDE Visual Studio 2022 came out late last year. How good is it really?

Top request from devs? A Linux version

IBM confirms new mainframe to arrive 'late in first half of 2022'

Hybrid cloud is Big Blue's big bet, but big iron is predicted to bring a welcome revenue boost

UK government opens consultation on medic-style register for Brit infosec pros

Are you competent? Ethical? Welcome to UKCSC's new list

Infosec chap: I found a way to hijack your web accounts, turn on your webcam from Safari – and Apple gave me $100k

Now you see a harmless PNG. Now it's a malicious payload. Look into my eyes

Former Oracle execs warn that Big Red's auditing process is also a 'sales enablement tool'

'Most of it – if not all of it – really amounts to fear, uncertainty and doubt'

Shut off 3G by 2033? How about 2023, asks Vodafone UK

Says it'll be 'asking customers' to make sure own phones support 4G, and to check on friends, family

Nvidia reportedly prepares for un-Arm'd combat with rivals: $40bn takeover may be abandoned

Softbank, meanwhile, remains 'hopeful' it can offload Brit chip designer

MORE
STORIES

Perseverance on the rocks: Pebbles clog up the rover's Martian sample collection

Engineers try to clear material so Mars bot can continue drilling

11 Jan 07:31 | 34

The James Webb Space Telescope has only gone and deployed its primary mirror

And you thought unfolding the table for Christmas dinner was tricky

10 Jan 12:00 | 65

Feeling virtuous with a good old paperback? Well, don't. Switching to traditional media does not improve mood

Study hopes to take the elitism out media consumption

07 Jan 18:29 | 53

Robotic arm on China's space station does a demo, swings out 20 degrees and back while holding cargo ship

Plan is to use the arm to finish putting the outpost together

07 Jan 11:44 | 21

North Korea worried a lot of countries when it said it test-fired a hypersonic missile in Japan's direction

South Korea thinks they just went ballistic

06 Jan 19:03 | 13

NASA confirms International Space Station is to keep orbiting through 2030

Patching over the cracks in partner relations and pressurised modules for a few extra years

05 Jan 20:07 | 26

Alexa and Webex to hitch a ride around the Moon on Artemis I – what could possibly go wrong?

How far's the Moon now? ... Here's 'How Soon Is Now?' from your Spotify playlist

05 Jan 17:26 | 15

Did you look up? New Year's Day boom over Pittsburgh was exploding meteor, says NASA

Rock detonated with same force as 30 tons of TNT (or 0.002 Little Boys)

05 Jan 04:20 | 18

You wood not believe what a Japanese logging company and university want to use to build a small satellite

Has the sustainability trend infiltrated the space industry?

04 Jan 19:01 | 93

A moment of tension as the James Webb Space Telescope stretches sunshield on way to L2 destination

Engineers on Earth have five and a half months more of this

04 Jan 16:07 | 72

James Webb Telescope launch delayed again, this time by weather

New launch date could be a marvelous Christmas gift to humanity

23 Dec 03:58 | 43

Boffins' first take on asteroid dust from Japanese probe: Carbon rich, less lumpy than expected

The five grams of Ryugu we got suggests it's made of the same stuff as the outer Sun

22 Dec 10:03 | 79

Confirmed: James Webb Space Telescope team plans launch for this Xmas Eve after data cable fix

Have all those scientists been naughty ... or nice?

16 Dec 23:36 | 39

Newly discovered millipede earns its name by being the first to walk on one thousand legs

Millipede? Has something been bugging you about the name? Not any more

16 Dec 20:08 | 77

Mars helicopter mission (which Apache says is powered byLog4j) overcomes separate network glitch to confirm new flight record

Ingenuity clocks up 30 minutes flying in the Martian skies

16 Dec 05:57 | 40

Apollo 17 samples yield fresh insights 49 years after mission left the Moon

Modern analytical techniques suggest the natural satellite cooled much faster than previously thought

15 Dec 09:30 | 13

Humanity has officially touched the Sun (or, at least, one of its probes has)

Parker solar probe partly determines where Sol ends and begins

15 Dec 06:45 | 69

ExoMars parachutes just about good enough to land rover safely on the Red Planet

Nobody wants to see Rosalind Franklin scattered over Oxia Planum

14 Dec 13:00 | 38

No more Commercial Space Astronaut Wings after this year because FAA has been handing them out like candy

You can still get a badge if you go now

13 Dec 18:45 | 16

ESA promises to get back to would-be astronauts by the end of 2021

A space thing running late? Who would have thought it?

13 Dec 14:27 | 3

NASA's new black hole spotter makes it into orbit

Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer's two year mission will check out polarization of black holes, neutrons and other celestial objects

10 Dec 07:57 | 8

Gas giant 11 times the mass of Jupiter discovered in b Centauri binary system

Orbit roughly 100 times wider than that of similar planets in our solar system

09 Dec 19:01 | 17

Actual metal being welded in support of the UK's first orbital 'launch platform'

Orbex is still testing, but aiming for the real thing in 2022

09 Dec 11:31 | 43

Boffins demonstrate a different kind of floppy disk: A legless robot that hops along a surface

08 Dec 09:15 | 20

Hubble Space Telescope restored to service: No repeat of those missing messages, but here's a software patch anyway

They went full science. Always go full science

07 Dec 17:45 | 19

It's primed and full of fuel, the James Webb Space Telescope is ready to be packed up prior to launch

Fingers crossed the telescope will finally take to space on 22 December

07 Dec 00:48 | 56

Galileo satnav system gets two new somewhat confusing satellites

Despite being the 27th and 28th launched, they're the first of a dozen first-gen birds

06 Dec 07:16 | 39

China's Yutu rover spots 'mysterious hut' on far side of the Moon

Cube-shaped object is probably just a rock. Yutu will check it out anyway

06 Dec 05:00 | 120

What will life in orbit look like after the ISS? NASA hands out new space station contracts

The end is coming, and nobody wants a homeless 'naut

03 Dec 20:23 | 42

ESA's Mars Express picks up plaintive bleeps of China's Zhurong rover, adding much-needed comms redundancy

02 Dec 19:01 | 6

Russia: It isn't just us – a bit of an old US rocket might get as close as 5.4km to the ISS

Meanwhile, Soyuz Cluedo continues: It was someone, with the drill, in the habitation module

01 Dec 19:05 | 41

ESA's Solar Orbiter sails safely past Earth despite orbiting debris concerns

See if you can guess when the spacecraft thrusters took over

01 Dec 09:59 | 12

We've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Mega-comets lurking in solar systems, spewing carbon monoxide

Comet BB is not only largest of its type that we know of, it was likely active billions of miles from the Sun

01 Dec 06:32 | 11

You, me and debris: NASA cans ISS spacewalk because it's getting too risky outside

Broken antenna will have to wait as warning comes in less than 24 hours before airlock opening

30 Nov 12:24 | 39

Hubble space 'scope brings its Cosmic Origins Spectrograph back online

Work continues on code to make the observatory operate happily when control unit message sync glitches out

30 Nov 06:58 | 9

AI-enhanced frog stem cells start to replicate in entirely new ways

Xenobots scoop up loose cells to make more of themselves. We welcome our new overlords

30 Nov 05:01 | 29

James Webb Space Telescope may actually truly launch this century, says NASA

Will it fly by Christmas? Betteridge's law probably applies

29 Nov 21:58 | 24

UK Space Agency wants primary school kids to design a logo for first Brit launches

Submissions must create a 'sense of pride.' What could possibly go wrong?

29 Nov 12:39 | 58

Nuclear fusion firm Pulsar fires up a UK-built hybrid rocket engine

A win in the rocketry world: 'Flames came out of the right end'

26 Nov 15:20 | 54

ESA's Solar Orbiter will swing past Earth this week – sure hope nobody created a big cloud of space junk up there

25 Nov 10:33 | 30

Theranos' Holmes admits she slapped Big Pharma logos on lab reports to boost her biz

'I wish I had done it differently' she tells jury in fraud trial

24 Nov 23:10 | 52

NASA boffins seem to think we're worth saving from fiery asteroid death so they're shooting a spaceship at one

Bruce Willis not required

24 Nov 12:28 | 76

LoRa to the Moon and back: Messages bounced off lunar surface using off-the-shelf hardware

... and a damn big radio telescope

24 Nov 09:30 | 49

Genetically modified E coli bacteria produce ink for 3D printing programmable objects

Drug delivery, environmental clean up, building in space among possible applications

23 Nov 19:35 | 13

James Webb Space Telescope gets all shook up – launch delayed again

Space agencies have been planning this thing since 1996, so what's four more days?

23 Nov 06:57 | 39

Fancy being an astronaut but didn't go to uni? Your time may have finally come

Japanese space agency wants 'nauts with good eyesight and work experience – no degree required

23 Nov 05:05 | 5

China's hypersonic glider didn't just orbit Earth, it 'fired a missile' while at Mach 5

Middle Kingdom suggests US is making it all up to justify arms development. As if!

23 Nov 00:35 | 100

Russia's orbital insanity is almost beyond redemption – but there's space for improvement

Every debris cloud has a silver lining

22 Nov 09:30 | 94

Everything but the catch: '90s pop act or a successful mission for Rocket Lab?

2022's plan: Playing with boosters and helicopters

18 Nov 17:30 | 17

New study demonstrates iodine as satellite propellant... in space

Tech promises to support boom in small satellites

18 Nov 11:46 | 47

It's fake ooze, don't fall for fake ooze: Alien fossils found on Mars might just be simple chemistry, uni pair warn

Similar mistakes have been made in the past, after all

18 Nov 07:29 | 37

Northrop Grumman throws hat in the ring to design NASA's next-gen Lunar Terrain Vehicle

Caution: Story contains questionable Lego recreation

16 Nov 18:34 | 24

Russia blows up old satellite, NASA boss 'outraged' as ISS crew shelters from debris

Moscow slammed for 'reckless, dangerous, irresponsible' weapon test

16 Nov 02:46 | 119

A diverse range of processing units linked via interconnects. Sounds familiar? Yes, it's IBM's quantum computing

System Two takes modular, data-center-inspired approach. Plus: 127-qubit Eagle Big Blue hopes will fly

16 Nov 01:55 | 4

NASA auditor's reality check says '2026 at the earliest' for Artemis Moon landing

All stacked up and nowhere to go

15 Nov 17:04 | 11

Earth's wobbly companion is probably the result of a lunar impact, reckon space boffins

Reflected light points to Moon-like material on recently discovered rock

12 Nov 17:15 | 38

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it an Electron rocket descending to the ocean?

Everything but catching the thing: Rocket Lab prepares for recovery

12 Nov 11:12 | 12

ESA tries listening to a red rover on the Red Planet: How did it go? The sound of silence

Mars Express wanted to demonstrate its relay smarts once again, but space agency mum on progress

11 Nov 11:44 | 2

International Space Station fires rockets to dodge chunk of destroyed Chinese satellite

Meanwhile, next crew of astronauts all set to launch on Thursday

11 Nov 02:56 | 30

Swiss lab's rooftop demo shows sunlight and air can make fuel

Proof of concept produces tiny volume of hydrocarbons, but makes a big point

10 Nov 13:13 | 76

NASA delays crewed Moon landing until 2025, citing technical infeasibility

The space agency wants you to know they are still committed to the project

10 Nov 07:57 | 31

Rolls-Royce set for funding fillip to build nuclear power stations based on small modular reactor technology

Private-sector investment could unlock additional government cash

09 Nov 12:30 | 211

Now that's a splash down: Astronauts spend 8-hour trip to Earth in diapers after SpaceX capsule toilet breaks

Puts a whole new spin on 'To boldly go where no one has gone before'

09 Nov 07:04 | 38

Hibernating instrument on Hubble roused as engineers ponder message problem

A software workaround for an iffy component looms. Sound familiar?

05 Nov 12:15 | 45

So it is possible for Jeff Bezos to lose: Court dismisses Blue Origin complaint about Moon contract award to Elon Musk

NASA and SpaceX to resume working on the next lunar lander

05 Nov 03:18 | 27

NASA picks spot at Moon's South Pole to perform first ice-drilling experiment

Featuring two sidekicks: A rover using Nokia's 4G and a hopping recon bot

04 Nov 07:11 | 19

Of course we've tried turning it off and on again: Yeah, Hubble telescope still not working

Science suspended as engineers study synchronisation issue

02 Nov 12:32 | 54

SpaceX-powered trip to ISS grounded by 'medical issue'

It's not COVID-19 and it's not an emergency, insists NASA

02 Nov 05:39 | 22

Google lab proposes solar-powered moisture farming to provide water for billions

From Tatooine to Earth

01 Nov 12:13 | 59

Trick or treat? Massive solar storm could light up American skies this Halloween

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a warning of a geomagnetic storm

29 Oct 22:03 | 22

Juno what? Jupiter's Great Red Spot is much deeper than originally thought

Boffins release treasure trove of findings from NASA probe, including weird cyclones around the poles

29 Oct 13:26 | 7

Pack your bags – we may have found the first planet outside of our galaxy

Alas, we will have to wait 70 years to confirm the sighting

28 Oct 02:04 | 37

'We will not rest until the periodic table is exhausted' says Intel CEO on quest to keep Moore's Law alive

From developers and Mount Evans ASICs to zettascale-by-2027 promises – what's Chipzilla got planned for us?

28 Oct 00:58 | 55

UK science suffers as lawmakers continue to dither over Brexit negotiations

Horizons Europe carrot dangled amid protocol wrangling

27 Oct 10:30 | 201

31-year-old piece of hardware not working very well: Hubble telescope back in safe mode over 'synchronization issues'

James Webb Space Telescope in line for a December flight

26 Oct 11:03 | 100

Jeff Bezos wants to build a business park in space

Pretty ambitious – none of this Blue-Origin-led consortium can put humans in orbit yet

26 Oct 00:04 | 46

NASA sets a date to begin lunar tuning

First Artemis mission is stacked on a rocket – now for five punishing sets of tests before liftoff

25 Oct 00:18 | 17

After more than a decade of development, South Korea has a near miss with Nuri rocket test

Nation playing catch-up following release from 1979 ban

21 Oct 13:59 | 10

Boeing's Starliner capsule corroded due to high humidity levels, NASA explains, and the spaceship won't fly this year

Meanwhile Elon's running orbital tourist trips and ISS crew missions

21 Oct 10:14 | 75

Theranos blood-test machine demos for VIPs rigged to hide any failures, court told

Error messages effectively piped to /dev/null, it is alleged

21 Oct 01:15 | 45

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