Content tagged "space exploration".
4 items (4 articles, 0 stories)
On August 30, 2026, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope lifts off from Kennedy Space Center with a field of view more than 100 times wider than Hubble's. We trace the one-way journey of a precision machine, built over more than a decade, riding a rocket it can never come back from.
ESA's Comet Interceptor will launch before its target comet has even been discovered, parking in space to wait. A mothership and two probes will approach a comet that has never before neared the sun, or possibly an interstellar visitor, from multiple directions at once. SORABUMI explains this unusual mission.
In July 2026, China's Tianwen-2 probe will rendezvous with Kamo'oalewa — a 40–100 m rock that follows Earth around the Sun. Could it be a fragment blasted off the lunar surface, or just a regular space rock that happened to wander close? SORABUMI breaks it down.
Using the naming of asteroid 'Torifune' as a starting point, we dig into what it means to give a name to a rock in space — IAU naming rules, the intersection of Japanese mythology and outer space, and the planetary defense mission driving Hayabusa2 forward.