compiled by Arlene & David Kaplan

Artemis: Nasa’s Orion capsule breaks distance records The US space agency’s Orion capsule has reached a key milestone on its demonstration mission around the Moon. The ship is uncrewed on this occasion, but if it completes the current flight without incident…more

SKA: Construction to begin on world’s biggest telescope One of the grand scientific projects of the 21st Century begins its construction phase on Monday. The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will be the largest radio telescope in the world when completed in 2028…more

Telescopes Team Up to Forecast an Alien Storm on Titan Saturn’s largest moon came under the gaze of NASA’s powerful Webb space observatory, allowing it and another telescope to capture clouds drifting through Titan’s methane-rich atmosphere. …more

James Webb Space Telescope ‘fingerprints’ earliest galaxies It’s not much to look at – just a little red blob with the rather quirky name of JADES-GS-z13-0. But this faint smudge, imaged by the James Webb Space Telescope, is the “most distant galaxy” so far confirmed by gold-standard…more

Remarkable space blast identified as black hole collision The event, a gamma-ray burst, was detected by a space telescope and a NASA observatory. A team of scientists including University of Leicester physicists described the minute-long blast as a rare cosmic event…more

Russian Spacewalk Is Canceled Because of Coolant Leak A spacewalk by two Russian astronauts aboard the International Space Station was canceled at the last minute after mission controllers noticed a spray of white particles leaking from an attached spacecraft. The problem, NASA said later, was a coolant leak…more

Give Thanks for the Winter Solstice. You Might Not Be Here Without It. On Dec. 21, or Wednesday this year, the sun will hug the horizon. For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, it will seem to barely rise — hardly peeking above a city’s skyline or a forest’s snow-covered evergreens — before it swiftly sets…more

Perseverance: Nasa Mars rover to lay down rocks for Earth return The American space agency’s Mars rover Perseverance will this week begin dropping samples of rock on to the surface of the Red Planet. It’s a major milestone in the quest to find out whether there is life on Mars…more

NASA’s InSight Records Monster Quake on Mars Estimated to be magnitude 5, the quake is the biggest ever detected on another planet. NASA’s InSight Mars lander has detected the largest quake ever observed on another planet: an estimated magnitude 5 temblor that occurred on May 4, 2022…more

James Webb telescope’s ghostly ‘Pillars of Creation’ It was the $10bn gift to the world. A machine that would show us our place in the Universe. The James Webb Space Telescope was launched exactly a year ago, on Christmas Day. It had taken three decades to plan, design and build…more