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Roman Launches: A Telescope's Countdown Ends

After a full week of build-up, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope actually flew. Liftoff came Sunday, August 30 at 7:26am Eastern — right on the primary window, no scrubs, no holds — on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Kennedy Space Center's storied Launch Complex 39A.

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The Weekend Wrap: Roman's Countdown Begins

Sunday August 30, NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launches on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39A. The primary window opens at 7:26am Eastern (11:26 UTC — 9:26pm Sunday night for anyone in Sydney), with a backup window the following morning if needed.

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The Space Mirrors Astronomers Really Don't Want

Today's episode centres on a genuinely new kind of space controversy — plus a Starship homecoming, a doomed exoplanet, and the untold budget fight behind Sunday's biggest launch. Here's the full rundown, with links to everything referenced.

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Diamond Rain, Decoded: Twenty Years of Disagreement, Solved

Physicists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, led by Marius Millot, have resolved a two-decade disagreement over exactly what temperature diamond melts at under extreme pressure — a question that matters far beyond curiosity, because it turns out to sit at the intersection of planetary science and fusion energy research.

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The Bubbling Surface of a Doomed Star

Astronomers using the ALMA array in Chile, led by Bill Dent of the European Southern Observatory, have released the most detailed picture yet of the actual surface of Betelgeuse — the red supergiant marking Orion's shoulder, roughly 600 light-years away.

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NASA's Roman Space Telescope Is Ready to Fly — Nine Months Early

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is now fully encapsulated inside the fairing of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket that will carry it to orbit, following encapsulation at Kennedy Space Center's Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility on August 21. Liftoff is targeted for no earlier than 7:26 a.m. Eastern time this Sunday, August 30.

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China Delays Its Most Ambitious Moon Mission Ever

Chang'e-7's launch window opened today, August 24, and ran through the 31st — but a tropical system, reported variously as Tropical Depression or Tropical Storm Narra, formed over the Gulf of Tonkin and threatened the Wenchang launch site on Hainan Island.

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China's About to Attempt the Most Ambitious Moon Mission Ever

The Weekend Wrap: Chang'e-7's hopping robot heads for the lunar south pole in search of water ice, plus a round-up of the week's biggest hardware stories

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NASA Finds the Crater a SpaceX Rocket Left on the Moon

Two weeks after a spent SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage struck the Moon, NASA and an international team of partners have pinpointed the exact impact site and released the first close-up images ....

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China's Private Rocket Sticks the Landing

Yesterday, Chinese commercial launch company LandSpace became the first private Chinese company ever to land an orbital-class rocket booster — a genuine milestone for the country's growing commercial space sector, and a story we've been watching build since an earlier attempt fell short last December.

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First Frenchwoman in Space Steps Outside

A historic spacewalk runs into antenna trouble, a trillion-mile river of gas explains tilted planets, an update on Starship's Ship 40, and SpaceX quietly nears 11,000 satellites

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Starship's Ship 40 Makes It Home

Three weeks ago, SpaceX's Starship Flight 13 upper stage did something no Starship upper stage had ever done before — it survived a soft, controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean, fully intact. What followed was a genuine ocean saga...

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