Hubble Space Telescope image of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS on July 21, 2025. The comet appears as a teardrop-shaped, bluish cocoon of dust (coma) around its solid icy nucleus, with a faint tail. Streaks in the image are background stars blurred by Hubble tracking the fast-moving comet science.nasa.gov science.nasa.gov. Discovery and Naming of 3I/ATLAS The comet…
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China Launches Two Space Missions in One Day (Aug. 17) China executed back-to-back orbital launches on Sunday, August 17. The first saw a Long March-4C rocket lift off from Xichang at 4:55 p.m. local time, carrying the Shiyan-28B 02 satellite for space environment exploration and technology tests english.news.cn. Hours later, a modified Long March-6 rocket…
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Rocket Launch Triumphs: New Heavy-Lifters and Constellation Boosts Lunar Missions & Spaceflight Milestones: Moon Race Intensifies Next-Gen Satellite Tech & Services: Innovation in Orbit Space Policy & International Developments: Safety, Funding, and Collaboration Sources: Spaceflight Now spaceflightnow.com spaceflightnow.com spaceflightnow.com; Space.com space.com space.com; Space & Defense spaceanddefense.io; Reuters reuters.com reuters.com; Space.com (B. Tingley) space.com space.com; Space.com…
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Discovery of 3I/ATLAS: A Visitor From Beyond Astronomers have confirmed a rare cosmic interloper entering our solar system – a comet from another star. The object, officially designated 3I/ATLAS, was first spotted on July 1, 2025 by the NASA-funded ATLAS survey telescope in Río Hurtado, Chile science.nasa.gov esa.int. (ATLAS stands for Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert…
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Crewed Missions & ISS Updates Crew-11 Launch to ISS: NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11 mission successfully lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on Aug. 1, carrying four astronauts – Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke (NASA), Kimiya Yui (JAXA), and Oleg Platonov (Roscosmos) – to the International Space Station apnews.com. The Falcon 9 rocket launched at 11:43 a.m.…
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Crew-11 Astronaut Launch Scrubbed, Then Success on Second Try NASA’s highly anticipated Crew-11 mission to the International Space Station faced a last-minute scrub on July 31 due to an unexpected weather violation. Mission control called off the launch just over a minute before liftoff, when a bank of cumulus clouds drifted within a 10-mile safety…
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Government Space Agencies: Major Launches and Missions India and NASA Launch Climate-Tracking Satellite: In a landmark collaboration, India’s space agency ISRO and NASA launched the $1.5 billion NISAR Earth-observation satellite on July 30. A Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) rocket lifted off from Satish Dhawan Space Centre at 5:40 p.m. IST, carrying the first joint NASA-ISRO radar imaging…
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Comparison of Latest and Upcoming Telescopes for 2025–2026 A new wave of telescopes is taking shape in 2025 and 2026, thrilling everyone from casual backyard stargazers to professional astronomers. In this period, consumer telescope technology has leapt forward – think AI-powered “smart” scopes that practically run themselves – while massive observatories on Earth and in…
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Introduction: War Sparks a New Space Race in Ukraine Russia’s full-scale invasion has dramatically accelerated Ukraine’s drive into the satellite age. Once a quiet player in space, Ukraine in 2024-2025 is treating satellites as strategic necessities rather than luxuries mod.gov.ua. Under the pressures of war, the country has launched ambitious new programs, forged international partnerships,…
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Key take‑aways (one‑paragraph executive summary) In early July 2025 astronomers using the NASA‑funded ATLAS telescope in Chile discovered a hyper‑fast object now designated 3I/ATLAS (C/2025 N1)—only the third confirmed interstellar body to enter our Solar System after ’Oumuamua (2017) and Borisov (2019). Follow‑up astrometry shows an inbound velocity of ≈58 km s⁻¹ and an orbital eccentricity of ≈6.1, values far in…
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