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SpaceX IPO set for liftoff in record market debut

Elon Musk’s SpaceX was set to begin trading on the Nasdaq exchange Friday, with the biggest initial public offering in history expected to make the polarizing entrepreneur the world’s first trillionaire.

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Science fiction? Musk’s lofty SpaceX goals unrealistic, skeptics say

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has made awe-inspiring achievements since its founding more than two decades ago and has big ideas—colonies on Mars, orbital AI data centers, rapidly reusable rockets—for the future.

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Cosmic dawn fuel discovery unlocks early galaxy growth secrets

Astronomers have discovered a huge reservoir of cold molecular gas, the direct fuel for star formation, in REBELS-25, a massive, star-forming galaxy. The team, led from Leiden University, focused on REBELS-25, seen when the universe was only about 700 million years old, around 5% of its current age. The research is published in the journal […]

A look at the SpaceX IPO by the numbers

Elon Musk is all about big numbers—millions, billions, even trillions—and there are plenty of them associated with SpaceX and Musk’s plans to take the rocket maker public.

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Light echoes reveal possible dark matter buildup around supermassive black holes

We may not know what dark matter is, but we keep getting whiffs of it. “We are reaching a point where the observational evidence for dark matter is simply undeniable,” said Mayank Sharma, a Virginia Tech graduate student in physics.

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ESA officially adopts ARRAKIHS mission: EU leads the exploration of the low surface brightness universe

The European Space Agency (ESA) has officially adopted ARRAKIHS as a scientific mission, confirming the target launch date of 2030. Matthieu Schaller is part of the science team: “I look forward to learning more about the dark part of our cosmos.”

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This is how supermassive black holes feed themselves

How supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in the centers of galaxies accrete material, how they feed back into the surrounding region, and how they regulate these processes to influence the evolution of their galaxies are all hot topics in astronomical and astrophysical research. Astronomers are nearly certain that all large galaxies like the Milky Way have […]

Earth’s energy imbalance has doubled—here’s why that matters

Heat waves across Europe and South Asia have dominated the news recently. But these events are really a surface expression of more fundamental changes affecting our planet: Earth itself is accumulating heat faster than ever before.

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Private space tourism is taking off—but laws on outer space are from another era

Private commercial operators are launching more rockets into space, carrying more people and pursuing more ambitious missions than ever before.

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How a shape-shifting tiny rover inspired by Japanese toys autonomously explored the moon

Moon missions come in all shapes and sizes, from car-sized rovers packed with scientific equipment to towering rocket payloads—and now, a small, shape-shifting machine that is about the size of the average palm.

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Binary asteroids’ puzzling configurations may link to multi-satellite history

Binary asteroid systems are widespread throughout our inner solar system. For decades, the standard paradigm held that many of them form when a rapidly spinning primary asteroid casts off material, which then reaccumulates into an elongated moon orbiting near the Roche limit.

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Consciousness likely not unique to earthlings, paper says

Does consciousness depend on flesh and blood? The answer is almost certainly no, according to Eric Schwitzgebel, a distinguished professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. In a new working paper, Schwitzgebel and Jeremy Pober, a former UCR graduate student who is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Lisbon, assert that […]

On the hunt for cosmic dawn and the universe’s very first stars

After only four short years, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and observational cosmologists like Richard Ellis at University College London (UCL) have pushed the cosmic lookback time to an era when the universe’s very first stars and galaxies are within observational reach.

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NASA head defends Artemis 3 crew of all men

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman on Wednesday defended the makeup of the space agency’s latest Artemis crew, an all-male group.

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NASA’s CloudCube pioneers miniaturized radar to study clouds, precipitation

A compact, multifrequency radar built by a team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory will make it easier to collect information about dynamic cloud systems. Called CloudCube, this new instrument simultaneously probes the atmosphere with three radar signals, spanning 36 to 240 GHz, for optimized sensitivity to a wide range of water droplet and ice particle […]