Private companies have launched dozens of imaging satellites – like the two small boxes in the middle of the photo – into orbit in recent years.
NASA/Steve Jurvetson
Private satellite companies have boomed in recent years, and many experts have wondered what role they would play in a conflict. They have proved to be invaluable to Ukraine in recent months.
The kiss aired one year after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned laws banning interracial marriage.
CBS via Getty Images
The head of the Russian space agency announced that the country will withdraw from the International Space Station after 2024. A space policy expert explains what this means and why it’s happening now.
The Yellow River in China winds past aquaculture and an oil and gas field on its way to a newly formed channel.
NASA
With decades of images and data from the same locations, these satellites can show changes over time, including deforestation, changes in waterways and how loss of trees corresponds to urban heat.
NASA released five new images from the James Webb Space Telescope, revealing incredible details of ancient galaxies, stars and the presence of water in the atmosphere of a distant planet.
A star forming region in the Milky Way.
NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI
Even experts were not prepared for the crispness of the new images from the James Webb space telescope.
Satellite imagery monitors environmental changes to inform agricultural decisions. Agricultural patterns are distinctly visible in this near-vertical false colour infrared photography of farmland south of Khartoum, Sudan.
(JSC/NASA)
Technologies being developed for growing food in space have contributed to advances in agriculture and crops on Earth.
China and the U.S. both have big plans for the Moon, but there are a number of reasons why no country could actually claim ownership of any land there.
3dScultor/iStock via Getty Images
A comment by Bill Nelson, the NASA administrator, sparked a strong public response from the Chinese government. But due to legal and practical reasons, no country could take over the Moon anytime soon.
Realistic colour view of Jupiter’s moon Europa.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute
There may be life on Jupiter’s moon Europa or Saturn moon’s Enceladus.
The mirror on the James Webb Space Telescope is fully aligned and producing incredibly sharp images, like this test image of a star.
NASA/STScI via Flickr
It has taken eight months to test and calibrate all of the instruments and modes of the James Webb Space Telescope. A scientist on the team explains what it took to get Webb up and running.
Australia may soon have three commercial space launch facilities
A panorama stitched together from about 100 individual Curiosity images. The ‘door’ is circled, and is tiny and hard to see at this scale.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
We should not be surprised that some of the innumerable rocks on Mars have weird shapes, because many have been sand-blasted by wind erosion for billions of years.
David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust in 1972: ‘an androgynous rockstar from outer space’.
Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo
In June 1972, the first United Nations conference on the human environment coincided with the release of David Bowie’s iconic Ziggy Stardust album. Both still feel disturbingly relevant today
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and one of our closest neighbors in space. But it’s not a very welcoming place for an Earthling to visit.
There is a U.S. flag on the Moon, but in the future, countries may start to turn access to the Moon and asteroids into serious wealth.
NASA/Neil A. Armstrong
Current trends suggest that powerful nations are defining the rules of resource use in space and satellite access in ways that will make it hard for developing nations to ever catch up.
NASA’s Landsat satellites have been monitoring changes on Earth’s landscape for 50 years.
NASA illustration
When Indigenous peoples lose their river flow to dams, satellite programs like Landsat – which is celebrating its 50th anniversary – can help them fight for their resources.
In the next decade, both a U.S.-led group and a collaboration between Russia and China aim to set up bases on the Moon.
Theasis/iStock via Getty Images
In the past 10 years, international alliances on Earth have begun to expand into space. Nations with similar interests collaborate with one another while competing with other space blocs.