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Space Travel

Saturn's famous northern hexagon has stood in place for more than 40 years of observations, and now Hubble has caught a matching 10-sided wave beginning to form around the planet's south pole as its seasons swing that hemisphere back into view

A team led by Agustín Sánchez-Lavega has confirmed a 10-sided atmospheric wave circling Saturn's south pole in Hubble images from 2023 to 2025, a possible counterpart to the northern hexagon that Voyager first glimpsed in 1980.

By Space Travel Editorial Team · Sep 14, 2026

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Earth Observation

Between 2020 and 2024, a Chinese-led team used the submersible Fendouzhe to survey seven hadal regions in the Indo-Pacific and found rich protist-dominated communities living on rocks more than nine kilometres down, where hard-substrate life had been largely unknown

A Chinese-led team using the crewed submersible Fendouzhe has photographed tubeworm fields, giant clam beds and snowy microbial mats more than nine kilometres beneath the Pacific — chemosynthetic ecosystems on a scale nobody expected at hadal depths.

By Space Travel Editorial Team · Sep 14, 2026
Deep Impact

A 710-metre asteroid in the main belt was found completing one rotation every 1.88 minutes—about 70 times faster than the limit beyond which a loosely bound rubble pile should begin breaking apart. Modelling suggests 2025 MN45 requires cohesion comparable to solid rock, perhaps because it is a compact fragment left by the destruction of a larger parent body.

Rubin Observatory measured a 710-metre main-belt asteroid turning once every 1.88 minutes, requiring rock-like cohesion under the study's model.

By Space Travel Editorial Team · Sep 14, 2026
Moon Daily

The flag Apollo 11 planted on the Moon cost just $5.50, and when the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter examined the six landing sites in 2012, shadows indicated that five flag assemblies were still standing. Apollo 11’s had apparently been flattened by the lunar module’s ascent exhaust, while decades of unfiltered ultraviolet radiation may have bleached the surviving nylon flags white.

The inexpensive nylon flag needed a purpose-built lunar assembly, and orbital shadows reveal more about the surviving poles than they do about the condition or colour of the cloth.

By Space Travel Editorial Team · Sep 13, 2026
Moon Daily

When Luna 9 made the first successful soft landing on the Moon on 3 February 1966, astronomers at Jodrell Bank recognised that its unencrypted picture signal resembled the Radiofax format used by newspapers. The Daily Express supplied a facsimile receiver, allowing the first photographs from the lunar surface to appear in Britain before Moscow officially released them.

Jodrell Bank turned Luna 9’s open picture signal into a printable image with a newspaper facsimile receiver before the Soviet official release.

By Space Travel Editorial Team · Sep 13, 2026

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The future of travel beyond Earth.

Space Travel is an independent publication covering human spaceflight, commercial missions, rocket technology, launch operations, and the engineering driving the future of exploration. The site pairs a deep archive with current reporting on the agencies, companies, research programs, and technical breakthroughs shaping how people and payloads move beyond Earth. We employ modern AI technologies to support our editorial workflows; every published piece is editorially directed and reviewed.

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