The space station is dead. Long live the space station.

In eight years, the International Space Station (ISS) – a bastion of global collaboration and human ability – will end. 

But that dramatic finale doesn't need to be a sombre occasion. Instead, it could herald an exciting future of human spaceflight that will hopefully already be underway.

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Was 2021 the kookiest year ever in space?

With space stations performing impromptu backflips, rockets careening out of control, billionaires going into space like they just don't care, and space junk threatening to cause disaster nearly every week, 2021 will go down as one of the more memorable years in space. 

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So, what would it feel like to fall into a black hole?

“Well, at the moment you crossed the horizon, you wouldn’t feel anything – there would be nothing dramatic,” says Peter Galison, co-founder of the Black Hole Initiative at Harvard University.“But inevitably, you would be pulled towards the centre,” he continues. “There’s no going back; everything that falls into a black hole just keeps falling; there’s no resisting that pull and things don’t end well.”

 Read more about his documentary film, Black Holes: The Edge of All We Know, four years in the making and available on Netflix from 1 June.

 

This could happen over the weekend.

Tracking radars are closing following the gradual fall to Earth of a large Chinese rocket segment.

 

The core stage from the Long March-5b vehicle was used to launch the first module of China's new space station last month. But the return of the rocket stage will be uncontrolled, and at 18 tonnes it is one of the largest items in decades to have an undirected dive into the atmosphere.

Various space debris modelling experts are pointing to the early hours (GMT) of Sunday as the likely moment of re-entry. However, such projections are always highly uncertain.

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Nasa’s Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, in first powered, controlled flight on another planet

The small helicopter successfully took flight on the red planet on Monday morning, hovering in the air at an altitude of about 3 metres (10 feet), before descending and touching back down on the Martian surface.

 The news was met by cheers and applause at mission control, and pictures from the mission showed the craft hovering. 

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Yuri Gagarin made history 60 years ago today by becoming the first human in space

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How Space Travel Shrank Astronaut Scott Kelly’s Heart

Scientists are still analyzing data from NASA's twin study, in which astronaut Scott Kelly spent a year aboard the International Space Station, while his identical twin brother, retired astronaut Mark Kelly acted as a control. A new research paper reveals that over 340 days in space, Scott Kelly's heart shrunk 27%! Read more

 

A large fireball was seen over the UK on Sunday night.

A large meteor blazed across UK skies on Sunday night, delighting those lucky enough to spot it.

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The Best Space Images of 2020

There was stunning cosmic imagery to feast on in 2020, from Hubble's 30th birthday image to footage of a daring sample grab on an asteroid. Here's BBC pick of the year's offerings.

 

How Apollo 8 Delivered Christmas Eve Peace and Understanding to the World

On December 21, 1968, Apollo 8 launched from Kennedy Space Center at 7:51 a.m. EST with Frank Borman in command. His crew became the first humans to ride the mighty Saturn V rocket, breaking the bonds of Earth’s physical pull and entering the gravitational field of another celestial body.

 In a new book, Smithsonian curator Teasel Muir-Harmony examines the geopolitics during NASA’s space flight program. 

 

'We are all star stuff.'

It’s the 30th anniversary of the first launch of the Hubble Space Telescope—the first major instrument to be placed in outer space and arguably one of the greatest inventions in the history of scientific discovery. The newly released book, Expanding Universe: The Hubble Space Telescope, is a celebration of this milestone, in which readers come face-to-face with some of the most unimaginable photographs that the telescope has captured.

 

Stellar Snowflake Cluster

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/P.S. Teixeira (Center for Astrophysics)

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What if the Universe has no end?

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/CXC/STScI) 

  The Big Bang is widely accepted as being the beginning of everything we see around us, but other theories that are gathering support among scientists are suggesting otherwise.
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International Space Station

Photograph: Nasa/EPA

 Nasa astronauts Jessica Meir, left, and Christina Koch inside the Quest airlock, preparing the spacesuits and tools they will use on their first spacewalk to replace a failed power controller.
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The first ever picture of a black hole

Astronomers have taken the first ever image of a black hole, which is located in a distant galaxy.
 It measures 40 billion km across - three million times the size of the Earth - and has been described by scientists as "a monster". The black hole is 500 million trillion km away and was photographed by a network of eight telescopes across the world.
 Details have been published today in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
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About Earthy

Little Earth might be small, but he’s part of a hugely important historical moment.
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Ultima Thule

Scientists from NASA's New Horizons mission released the first detailed images of the most distant object ever explored — the Kuiper Belt object nicknamed Ultima Thule.

 

The International Space Station turns 20

Two decades ago, the Zarya module lifted off from Kazakhstan, ushering in a new era of high-tech cooperation in space. See more images here.

 

Could Nasa's next big thing see alien life?

If it does launch as currently scheduled in 2021, it will be 14 years late. When finally in position, though - orbiting the Sun 1.5 million km from Earth - Nasa's James Webb Space Telescope promises an astronomical revolution.
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A Space Hotel Could Be Coming Soon to Skies Near You

Spaceflight company Bigelow Space Operations (BSO) wants to sell hotel reservations to give space enthusiasts—or scientists on a budget—a once-in-a-lifetime experience, Mike Wall reports for Space.com. Read more