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Space Shuttle Columbia
Space Shuttle Columbia (NASA Orbiter Vehicle Designation: OV-102) was the first space shuttle in NASA's orbital fleet. Its first mission, STS-1, lasted from April 12 to April 14, 1981. On February 1, 2003, Columbia disintegrated during re-entry on its 28th mission; all seven crew members aboard were killed.
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Space & Time News
October 14, 2025
Oct. 14, 2025 — High above the Sun’s blazing equator lie its mysterious poles, the birthplace of fast solar winds and the heart of its magnetic heartbeat. For decades, scientists have struggled to see these regions, hidden from Earth’s orbit. With the upcoming ...
Oct. 12, 2025 — A colossal northern asteroid impact billions of years ago likely shaped the Moon’s south polar region and explains its uneven terrain. Researchers found that the South Pole-Aitken Basin formed from a glancing northern strike, revealing deep ...
Oct. 12, 2025 — ESA’s Mars orbiters have observed comet 3I/ATLAS, only the third interstellar comet ever discovered. The faint, distant object revealed a glowing coma as it was heated by the Sun. Researchers are still studying the data to understand its makeup ...
Oct. 9, 2025 — Mars may look calm, but new research reveals it’s a world of fierce winds and swirling dust devils racing at hurricane-like speeds. Using deep learning on thousands of satellite images from European orbiters, scientists have discovered that ...
Oct. 6, 2025 — ESA has inaugurated a powerful new 35-meter deep space antenna at its New Norcia site in Western Australia, marking a major boost to Europe’s ability to communicate with spacecraft exploring the ...
Oct. 3, 2025 — Researchers have designed a new type of gravitational wave detector that operates in the milli-Hertz range, a region untouched by current observatories. Built with optical resonators and atomic clocks, the compact detectors can fit on a lab table ...
Sep. 30, 2025 — A new boron-rich compound, manganese diboride, delivers much higher energy density than current solid-rocket materials while remaining stable until intentionally ignited. Its power comes from an unusual, strained atomic structure formed during ...
Sep. 18, 2025 — Astronomers have long relied on supercomputers to simulate the immense structure of the Universe, but a new tool called Effort.jl is changing that. By mimicking the behavior of complex cosmological models, this emulator delivers results with the ...
Sep. 18, 2025 — Faint hydrogen signals from the cosmic Dark Ages may soon help determine the mass of dark matter particles. Simulations suggest future Moon-based observatories could distinguish between warm and cold dark matter, providing long-sought answers about ...
Sep. 17, 2025 — A new AI model from NYU Abu Dhabi predicts solar wind days in advance with far greater accuracy than existing methods. By analyzing ultraviolet solar images, it could help protect satellites, navigation systems, and power grids from disruptive space ...
Sep. 15, 2025 — The booming space industry has filled the skies with rockets and satellites, but this rapid expansion comes with a hidden danger: slowing the recovery of the ozone layer. Rocket launches and burning space debris release chlorine, soot, and metals ...
Sep. 11, 2025 — NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission has uncovered surprising behavior of pickup ions drifting through the solar wind near Earth. These particles, once thought to be minor players, appear capable of generating waves and influencing how the ...
Latest Headlines
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Oct. 14, 2025 — Scientists imaged the heart of the OJ 287 galaxy, uncovering a curved plasma jet around what appears to be two merging supermassive black holes. The ...
Oct. 14, 2025 — New observations from the James Webb Space Telescope hint that the universe’s first stars might not have been ordinary fusion-powered suns, but enormous “supermassive dark stars” powered by ...
Oct. 12, 2025 — Complex, intelligent life in the galaxy appears vanishingly rare, with the nearest possible civilization perhaps 33,000 light-years distant. Yet despite the odds, scientists insist that continuing ...
Oct. 12, 2025 — Scientists using a global array of radio telescopes have detected the universe’s lowest-mass dark object by observing how it warped light through gravitational lensing. The invisible mass, about a ...
Oct. 9, 2025 — The James Webb Space Telescope has uncovered a massive red supergiant star just before it exploded, finally solving a cosmic mystery. Hidden beneath layers of dust, the doomed star revealed itself ...
Oct. 9, 2025 — Asteroid 2025 TF zipped past Earth above Antarctica, coming within 428 km of the surface. Roughly the size of a small car, it was detected hours after the flyby and posed no danger. ESA astronomers ...
Oct. 8, 2025 — Scientists have simulated how M87*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy M87, powers its immense particle jet. The Frankfurt team’s FPIC code shows that magnetic reconnection, ...
Oct. 8, 2025 — By combining Gaia’s massive asteroid dataset with AI modeling, scientists discovered that asteroid rotation depends on how often they’ve been ...
Oct. 7, 2025 — Hubble captured a breathtaking view of NGC 6000, a spiral galaxy where blue newborn stars shine beside golden, aging ones. The image also reveals traces of ancient supernovae still glowing faintly ...
Oct. 6, 2025 — Astronomers have found the most distant and energetic “odd radio circle” ever detected — a massive double-ringed radio structure nearly 10 billion years old. The discovery, made with the help ...