Japan launched a pioneering observatory with X-ray vision Wednesday to peer into the mysterious, light-starved neighborhoods around black holes and study the genesis of galaxies and other cosmic mega-structures billions of light-years from Earth.
A Soviet-era missile originally built to deliver nuclear warheads to the United States in wartime fired into space for a much different purpose Tuesday, carrying a European environmental satellite into orbit to help track the effects of climate change.
Japan’s Astro-H mission, an X-ray astronomy observatory designed to shed light on black holes and the unseen structure of the universe, lifted off aboard an H-2A rocket from the Tanegashima Space Center at 0845 GMT (3:45 a.m. EST) Wednesday.
Soaring into the night sky over a guarded Russian military base, a 1.2-ton European satellite rocketed into orbit Tuesday to regularly measure how the world’s oceans and ice sheets respond to climate change and drive global weather patterns.
A European environmental satellite launched Tuesday from Russia’s Plesetsk Cosmodrome to begin a mission of at least seven years measuring the height, color and temperature of the world’s oceans. The Sentinel 3A spacecraft lifted off aboard a Rockot booster at 1757 GMT (12:57 p.m. EST).
Delays in the debut of SpaceX’s huge Falcon Heavy rocket have prompted ViaSat to move the launch of a high-speed Internet communications satellite from the new privately-developed booster to an Ariane 5 flight in early 2017, officials said last week.
Russian rocket technicians fueled a decommissioned ballistic missile with propellants Monday, a day ahead of the launch of a European satellite primed to observe the planet’s oceans.
Europe’s Sentinel 3A satellite, designed for real-time surveys of the world’s oceans, ice sheets, lakes and rivers, is attached to a decommissioned Russian nuclear missile for launch Tuesday. These photos show the spacecraft’s final prelaunch preparations.
The Japanese space agency said Thursday the launch of an X-ray astrophysics observatory is postponed from Friday due to a poor weather forecast at the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan.
A century after Albert Einstein predicted their existence, gravitational waves have finally been detected, tiny ripples in the fabric of spacetime that were generated when two massive black holes crashed together in a space-warping cataclysm.