While hunting for the disputed planet Fomalhaut b, astronomers on Hubble noticed a second point of light appear out of nowhere near the same star, and Berkeley's Paul Kalas says it looks like the debris of a violent collision unlike anything in our solar system today

The Tunguska object vaporised almost entirely in the airburst, so Leonid Kulik's 1920s and 1930s expeditions mapped the event not from a crater but from the radial pattern of felled and scorched trees stretching hundreds of square kilometres from the epicentre

The 1908 Tunguska explosion flattened 2,150 square kilometres of Siberian forest without leaving a crater. Leonid Kulik's expeditions reconstructed the event entirely from the radial pattern of felled trees — and a century later, the airburst remains the largest cosmic impact in recorded human history.

By Space Travel Editorial Team · Sep 7, 2026

A funnel of pitch cut open in 1930 has produced only nine drops in 96 years, and scientists still expect the next one sometime in the 2020s

In 1930, a physicist at the University of Queensland cut open the stem of a funnel filled with pitch to show his students that some solids are actually very slow fluids. Ninety-six years later, only nine drops have fallen — and no human has ever witnessed one detach.

By Space Travel Editorial Team · Aug 31, 2026

Michael Collins spent roughly 21 hours alone in the Apollo 11 command module while Armstrong and Aldrin were on the surface, and for 48 minutes of each orbit he was on the far side of the Moon with no radio contact to Earth, further from another human than anyone before him

During the Apollo 11 mission, Michael Collins spent about 21 hours alone in lunar orbit aboard Columbia, losing radio contact with Earth for roughly 48 minutes of every orbit as he passed behind the far side of the Moon — a physical isolation no human has matched since.

By Space Travel Editorial Team · Aug 16, 2026

The Apollo 12 crew brought back Surveyor 3’s camera after 31 months on the Moon, and NASA reported finding live Streptococcus bacteria inside it, but later evidence pointed to contamination in Houston

In November 1969, Apollo 12 astronauts retrieved the television camera from Surveyor 3 after 31 months on the lunar surface. When NASA opened it in Houston, technicians reported finding live Streptococcus mitis inside the foam — a claim later challenged, but one that reshaped how spacecraft are built.

By Space Travel Editorial Team · Aug 5, 2026

How does a city-state of just over six million people meet up to 40 percent of its water needs by recycling what residents flush and drain away?

Singapore meets nearly 40 percent of its daily water demand with NEWater — sewage pushed through microfiltration, reverse osmosis, and UV disinfection at five plants run by PUB. Here's how a city-state of 5.9 million built the world's largest civilian closed-loop water system.

By Space Travel Editorial Team · Aug 4, 2026

What’s up in

Space Travel

Human spaceflight, commercial missions, astronaut life, station operations, space medicine, and the technologies making travel beyond Earth more accessible.

In 1928, Alexander Fleming came back from a summer holiday to find a stray mould had drifted onto a Staphylococcus plate in his cluttered London lab, and the clear ring of dead bacteria around it became the accidental beginning of the antibiotic era

By Space Travel Editorial Team

What happened when a London doctor had the handle removed from one street pump in 1854, and how did the investigation reshape how cities track disease?

By Space Travel Editorial Team

How did a captured wartime rocket, launched from a New Mexico desert in 1946, take the first photograph of Earth from space more than a decade before any satellite reached orbit?

By Space Travel Editorial Team

In 1970, Soviet engineers landed a small eight-wheeled rover called Lunokhod 1 on the Moon and drove it by joystick from a bunker in Crimea, and its laser reflector sat lost on the lunar surface for nearly 40 years before a team at UC San Diego bounced a beam off it again in 2010

By Space Travel Editorial Team

What’s up in

Rocket Science

Rockets, propulsion systems, spacecraft engineering, launch vehicles, and the technical breakthroughs carrying people and payloads safely into space.

Sateliot books Spanish Miura 5 launch for two next gen Trito satellites in 2027

By Space Travel Editorial Team

New Wenchang lunar pad completes first Long March 10 test

By Space Travel Editorial Team

Exolaunch to deploy five satellites on Spectrum mission from Norway

By Space Travel Editorial Team

China retrieves Long March 10 booster from South China Sea after test flight

By Space Travel Editorial Team

What’s up in

Launch Pad

Launch campaigns, mission countdowns, launch providers, orbital operations, and the infrastructure that turns spacecraft plans into flight.

Dragon spacecraft gears up for crew 12 arrival and station science work

By Space Travel Editorial Team

China prepares offshore test base for reusable liquid rocket launches

By Space Travel Editorial Team

Retired EVA workhorse to guide China's next-gen spacesuit and lunar gear

By Space Travel Editorial Team