Sarwat Nasir

1 week ago | thenationalnews.com | Sarwat Nasir

A ground test of SpaceX 's Starship rocket ended in a massive explosion on Thursday morning at the company's Starbase centre in Boca Chica, Texas. A dramatic video posted on social media shows Starship Ship 36 erupting into a massive fireball at about 8am UAE time while undergoing a static fire test, where the rocket is partially fuelled and engines are ignited before an actual flight can take place.

1 week ago | thenationalnews.com | Sarwat Nasir

Japanese car manufacturer Honda is hoping to join an elite club of companies that launch reusable rockets after carrying out a successful test. During a one-minute flight on Tuesday, an experimental rocket reached an altitude of 271.4 metres before descending within 37cm of the target point.

1 week ago | thenationalnews.com | Sarwat Nasir

Scientists can take a longer, clearer look at the Sun's outer atmosphere thanks to a European mission that created the first artificial solar eclipse in space. The feat was made possible by the European Space Agency's Proba-3 mission, which involved two spacecraft flying in perfect formation more than 600km above Earth. The pair lined up to block out the bright disc of the Sun and reveal its faint outer atmosphere, called the corona, creating an artificial eclipse.

1 week ago | thenationalnews.com | Sarwat Nasir

An air leak on the International Space Station has raised concerns about how much longer the lab can keep operating safely. Nasa said the leak had been sealed but the incident cast doubt on when a private astronaut mission by Axiom Space, involving the first Indian astronaut in 41 years, would be launched. The leak was found in a Russian section of the station called Zvezda, which was added to the ISS as a module in 2000.

2 weeks ago | thenationalnews.com | Sarwat Nasir

China’s latest deep space mission aims to investigate whether rocky debris ejected from planetary surfaces in the early Solar System could have helped distribute life’s key ingredients across space. The Tianwen-2 spacecraft, launched on May 29, is on its way to collect material from a small near-Earth asteroid that may be a piece of the Moon. After that, it will travel even farther to study a mysterious object in the asteroid belt that behaves like a comet.