For the next few evenings, the waxing gibbous moon is already well up as skies darken. If you happen to see it, keep in mind ...

Earth has a growing space junk problem, with three sizable pieces of debris crashing onto our planet every day. To combat ...

The fairing enshrouds the rocket's payload during ascent and is usually jettisoned once the atmosphere is thin enough that there is no risk to the payload. That typically happens much higher up than ...

Happy Monday, listeners! For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, this is Allison Parshall filling in for Rachel Feltman. Let’s kick off the week with a quick roundup of some of the latest ...

The Venera mission, which launched from Kazakhstan on March 31, 1972, failed long before the Soviet Union could attempt to touch down on Venus. Because of a propulsion problem, it never escaped ...

In recent weeks, the spacecraft known as Kosmos 482 has been making an uncontrolled approach towards Earth. Experts have been tracking it since – though they noted that it was very unlikely that ...

An out-of-control Russian spacecraft has probably plummeted to Earth, after 53 years stuck in orbit, experts say. In recent weeks, the spacecraft known as Kosmos 482 has been making an uncontrolled ...

On May 10, 2025 at 06:24 GMT, the remnants of the Kosmos 482 probe entered the Earth's atmosphere. According to Roscosmos, the titanium capsule impacted somewhere over the eastern Indian Ocean ...

Kosmos 482 rocketed into space more than 50 years ago on a quest to reach Venus, but its journey was scuttled by an apparent engine malfunction. Over time the craft fell closer and closer to Earth ...

Humanity lives to fight another day after the failed Soviet lander re-entered our atmosphere at 2:24AM ET on Saturday before harmlessly splashing down in the Indian Ocean west of Jakarta, Indonesia, ...