r/space • u/malcolm58 • 20h ago
r/space • u/AutoModerator • 6d ago
Discussion All Space Questions thread for week of October 11, 2026
Please sort comments by 'new' to find questions that would otherwise be buried.
In this thread you can ask any space related question that you may have.
Two examples of potential questions could be; "How do rockets work?", or "How do the phases of the Moon work?"
If you see a space related question posted in another subreddit or in this subreddit, then please politely link them to this thread.
Ask away!
r/space • u/Dorian182 • 9h ago
UF study finds plants respond almost immediately to spaceflight
r/space • u/Dorian182 • 1h ago
Salt crystals could hold clues to life beneath Enceladus’s ice
Discussion I made a free site that shows what’s above us right now: ISS position, space debris, upcoming launches, solar activity, etc
I’m a space nerd and got tired of jumping between a dozen sites to check this stuff, so I built one app that pulls it all together live: https://spacehud.com
It's almost all visual rather than dry data and tables.
It’s just a hobby site... if you think anything else should be added let me know.
r/space • u/joshdinner • 1d ago
'We are getting a lot of pressure from the administrator himself': How NASA is racing to obey Trump's 'Super Intelligence' order
Internal NASA documents lay out plans to update the agency's websites, publications, organizational titles and digital infrastructure with a four-phase "super intelligence" implementation schedule extending into December.
r/space • u/ye_olde_astronaut • 11h ago
Rigorous Analysis Confirms NASA’s Artemis II Heat Shield Performance
r/space • u/Dorian182 • 8h ago
Rocket Report: FAA eyes more Starbase traffic; India’s Skyroot snares US customer
r/space • u/malcolm58 • 20h ago
Scientists find 'gemstones' in atmosphere of bizarre, scorching-hot 'marshmallow' exoplanet
r/space • u/ThinkTankDad • 20h ago
‘Kinmen’ approved as name for 1km asteroid
SPACE PARK?NCU president Hsiau Shu-san said that the name links Kinmen National Park’s historical and natural heritage on Earth with space exploration
By Rachel Lin and Jake Chung / Staff reporter, with staff writer
r/space • u/PerAsperaAdMars • 1d ago
NASA Funding Delays Raise Alarms for Researchers
r/space • u/Dorian182 • 21h ago
Building the Infrastructure for More Frequent Launches in Florida
blueorigin.comCalifornia startup planning orbital mirrors tests simulated satellite illumination near Mount Whitney
r/space • u/Slow_cpu • 1d ago
Sydney student creates first map of Martian soils, If we are to grow food on Mars, we will need to know what we are growing it in.
r/space • u/DiveLive • 2d ago
The two satellites that made India the fourth country to dock in space have re-entered, seven hours apart
r/space • u/trevorbutrum • 1d ago
A New Citizen Science Project: Overlap Zoo!
Hi everyone!
I recently launched a new citizen science project on Zooniverse to classify overlapping galaxies. These objects are extremely interesting to us because they can be used to directly measure dust attenuation (absorption and scattering of light). These measurements help us better measure distances and much more. We would appreciate your help classifying these objects and building a much larger catalog of them for future studies!
If you want to learn even more, please check out our blog post as well: https://blog.galaxyzoo.org/2026/09/22/announcing-the-overlap-zoo-project/
Thank you for your time,
Trevor Butrum - Overlap Zoo Team Lead
r/space • u/Awkward-Shower5299 • 2h ago
Discussion 1yo obsessed with space and need space activity recs
Our 1yo is the biggest fan of space and the planets. He can distinguish and name all the planets! We try to keep his interest going and reinforce it and he learns so much so everything space like books, videos, stickers. We have been wanting to take him to some kind of place about space play place or kids museum but I cannot find anything for his age. Any recommendations?!?!
We’re located in AZ and happy to travel/roadtrip if it will be really cool for him!
r/space • u/ADragonFromTheAbyss • 2d ago
A Moon With No Sun Could Keep Water Liquid for 4.3 Billion Years, Scientists Say. How life could still thrive on moons of starless 'rogue' planets
"The cradle of life does not necessarily require a sun."
The Hydrogen-rich exomoon atmospheres could hold liquid water for billions of years.
A moon lost in interstellar darkness may still be able to hold on to liquid water, no star required. A modeling study suggests that some exomoons orbiting rogue planets could stay warm for billions of years, even after their host worlds are thrown out of their star systems and into the cold of deep space.
The finding challenges the familiar idea that potentially habitable worlds must receive light from a nearby star. Instead, the study points to a different engine for habitability — heat generated inside a moon by tidal stress, then trapped by a thick hydrogen atmosphere.
Rogue planets drift through space without orbiting a star. Astronomers think many of them were thrown out of their original planetary systems during violent gravitational encounters.
When a giant planet gets ejected, the orbits of its moons can become stretched into more elongated shapes. As the moon moves closer to and farther from its host planet, the planet’s gravity repeatedly squeezes and flexes the moon’s interior.
That process, called tidal heating, can generate a steady supply of internal heat. Jupiter’s moon Io offers a familiar example: tidal forces make it the most volcanically active body in the solar system. Europa and Enceladus also show how internal heat can keep water-rich worlds active far from the sun.
Earlier studies had already suggested that rogue-planet moons might stay warm enough for liquid water if they built up thick carbon dioxide atmospheres.
But those models ran into a serious problem. In the deep cold expected around free-floating planets, carbon dioxide can condense out of the air. Once that happens, the atmosphere can collapse, and much of the moon’s heat escapes into space.
The new study tackles that problem by swapping carbon dioxide for hydrogen. Hydrogen is the lightest element, and in Earth’s thin atmosphere it does very little to trap heat.
Under very high pressure, though, hydrogen behaves differently. When hydrogen molecules crowd together and collide, they briefly form pairs and clusters that can absorb infrared radiation.
Scientists call this process collision-induced absorption. In plain terms, a dense hydrogen atmosphere can act like a surprisingly strong heat blanket.
r/space • u/GeniusBandit • 2d ago
Study reveals green, pink and purple stars are possible, at least in white dwarfs
r/space • u/tsmspace • 11h ago
Discussion nuclear fission chemical solid rocket motor?
I am envisioning (and being told hmmm impossible) a solid rocket motor that while chemically burning produces fission to increase thrust.
My idea turns out to have some similarity to the famed NASA "Pulse Plasma Rocket" , which features a barrel of low enriched uranium with an end section of the barrel being made of high enriched uranium, and with a low enriched uranium slug being fired down the barrel so that by the time it leaves the barrel it goes supercritical converting the slug into plasma which pushes on a magnetic nozzle.
In my solid chemical rocket, the metal that is burned in the formula is also a fissionable element. The propellent travels through a throat (and perhaps a long throat like the barrel) that acts as a neutron source which would fission some of the metal used in the chemical process, contributing heat to the exhaust gases. If lithium is used, then lithium fission produces deuterium which can be fused with hydrogen under the right conditions, so a more advanced version of the solid chemical rocket motor would try to produce some amount of this fusion as well in the process to further heat the exhaust gases.
The main response to the idea is that the particles of fissionable material would need to be exposed to an unavailable neutron source, because so many neutrons would be required as the fissionable material passes very quickly through the nozzle.
Does anyone think that perhaps with a long nozzle barrel or any other way that such a chemical rocket could then be boosted by fission?
r/space • u/CaptainKaveman • 1d ago
Discussion My friend wants to see a “jellyfish”
So with the recent videos popping up of the launch that caused the cool jellyfish effect thing in the sky, I’m wondering how easy it is to predict these sorts of things. For example, there’s a falcon 9 scheduled to liftoff at 6:30am in a few days. Is it reasonable to think that there could be a visual phenomenon with this launch or are there more things to consider than just time of day when trying to predict said phenomenon?
r/space • u/Creative-Chance8479 • 12h ago
Discussion The universe scares the hell out of me
In about 10^100 years, everything in the universe including black holes will die out and leave nothing but particles floating around. This is because Dark Energy is constantly pushing galixies away from each other in every direction evenly, and in fact, 94% of galixies we see today are physically impossible to reach even if we traveled at the speed of light.
That is so unbelievably terrifying to me, because it makes you wonder... Why are we here? Or an even better question, why was the universe even created?
All of the energy that created the big bang couldn't have just come from nowhere. Right? And that's the scary part to me. What was the source of all of that energy? A god? A simulation? Something beyond comprehension?
The whole fact that a massive and possibly infinite universe has a beginning and end is so baffling to me and I don't think I will ever be able to wrap my head around it.
It really pisses me off that these questions will go forever unanswered and one day I'll be dead and gone like everything else in the universe. But at the end of the day, it sure helps me feel better ranting about it.
What do you think created the universe? And a better question, why?
r/space • u/Slow_cpu • 2d ago