Space

Sean Bromilow On a crisp, cloudless night in Nottingham, how many stars can you see? According to this interactive map, made with data from the Countryside Charity’s 2023 Star Count, it’s likely that you won’t spot more than 10 stars in the entire sky. This isn’t a local issue,...

Sean Bromilow Early this February, space enthusiasts around the world tuned in at 6:30am GMT to watch as a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket fired NASA’s newest satellite into orbit, where it directed its gaze back down to Earth from a viewpoint higher than the International Space Station. This was...

Adaora Elliott The Virgin Orbit ‘Start Me Up’ Mission consisted of the Cosmic Girl, a modified Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747, being used as a launching mechanism for the LauncherOne rocket. It had its seats removed, its upper deck converted into a control centre for launch engineers, and a LauncherOne...

On the 28th April 2001, US millionaire Dennis Tito became the first private civilian to venture into space, spending over a week at the International Space Station. Cashing out a massive $20 million for a place on the Russian Soyuz rocket, Tito would become the catalyst for other adventure-seeking...

Christina Giallombardo Looking up at the night sky with the naked eye and seeing nothing but darkness and a few stars, it’s hard to imagine the sheer volume of space debris (also known as space junk) orbiting the Earth. The space junkyard gives us a glimpse back in time....

Adam Goriparthi In a celestial phenomenon termed ‘The Great Conjunction’, Jupiter and Saturn are set to align just in time for Christmas – appearing so close that they look like they have become ‘one’. The celestial giants will be particularly close together this month in a spectacle that will...

Aleyna Adamson  The 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three scientists for their discoveries on black holes. One half of the prize was awarded to Roger Penrose for his discovery that black holes are a direct result of Einstein’s theory of general relativity. The other half was...