#Astronomers capture the most detailed image yet of our galaxy’s centre, The image is the product of a four-year international effort using one of the most powerful telescopes on Earth, the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimeter Array, or ALMA, a collection of more than 50 radio antennae spread across a high plateau in the Chilean Andes.

“We’ve never had a picture of what’s happening right in the centre of our galaxy before,” said Steven Longmore, a professor of astrophysics at Liverpool John Moores University who led the project called the Atacama Large Millimeter Array Central Molecular Zone Exploration Survey, or ACES. “We’ve had lots of detailed studies on small regions, but this is the first time that we’ve had an entire map of the cold gas in the centre of our galaxy.”

Previous observations of the Milky Way have been like snapshots taken in different spots of the same city, Longmore explained. This Milky Way image, however, is like a top-down view of the entire city. “You don’t get the full story of a city unless you have a total map of it,” he said.
A map of molecular gas

The galactic centre of the Milky Way — known as the Central Molecular Zone, or CMZ — is far denser, hotter and more turbulent than the regions of space closer to Earth, Longmore said. At its very core is Sagittarius A*, a supermassive black hole roughly four million times more massive than our sun.

This part of the galaxy has the strongest gravitational pull, “so everything is trying to fall into that,” Longmore said. He compared it to a draining bathtub — the black hole acts as the drain and vast clouds of molecular gas act as the swirling water.

The new image maps the molecular gas, which is made up of molecules including hydrogen, carbon monoxide and dozens of more complex compounds that will eventually collapse under their own gravity to form new stars and planetary systems, he added. Understanding when and where in the galaxy that collapse will happen is the central mystery the ACES survey was designed to investigate.

“We’re looking at star-forming material in this extreme environment. It’s the first really detailed look at how that gas is distributed in 3D space,” said Richard Teague, a professor of planetary science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who was not involved with the project.
Not the typical Milky Way photo

The Milky Way images most people are familiar with, depicting the sweeping spiral galaxy from above, are illustrations, not photographs, Longmore said. “They’re just what we think it looks like,” he added.

What ACES captured is a map of the gas in motion. By measuring the precise frequencies of light emitted by specific molecules, scientists can detect tiny shifts caused by the Doppler effect — the same phenomenon that makes an ambulance siren sound higher-pitched as it approaches and lower-pitched as it recedes, Longmore explained. Using a technique called spectroscopy, this principle can be applied to light from gas clouds, revealing whether the gas is moving toward or away from Earth, and how fast.

Such a level of detail, maintained consistently across the entire mapped area, has never been achieved before, Longmore said. Teague added that previous surveys either covered wide areas at low resolution or zoomed in on small patches with high resolution, but ACES does both in a balanced way.
What can we learn from the image?

The rich colours in the ACES images are not what the human eye would see if the Milky Way were to be viewed from the vantage point of the telescope. In fact, the colours were not actually picked up by the telescope as visible light. Instead, the telescope identified chemical species and gas velocities using spectroscopy, and the images were then edited to assign specific colours to the different galactic features.

“Each of the molecules tells us something about the conditions there,” Longmore explained. The red areas may indicate the presence of molecules such as silicon monoxide, which appear only when massive gas clouds collide. Blue, on the other hand, signals quieter, more stable regions, he said.

Altogether, the survey observes more than 70 different molecular spectral lines — signatures of simple two-atom molecules, complex organic compounds, such as methanol and ethanol, and everything in between. Longmore noted that some of the complex molecules are thought to be precursors to amino acids, the building blocks of proteins.

Longmore sees the galactic center as a proxy for the early universe. The conditions there closely resemble those of galaxies billions of years ago, when our own solar system was forming.

“The universe has given us a laboratory to understand our own origins,” he said. “Our own solar system, the sun and our own planets formed a long time ago, about 4.5 billion years ago, and the galaxies were very different. The galaxies back then were very much like the gas we see now in the galactic centre.”

The leaders of the House Science Committee say the Federal Communications Commission is overstepping its authority with parts of a space licensing rulemaking.

#WASHINGTON — Space and cyber forces moved first in preparation for U.S. and #Israeli strikes on #Iran on Feb. 28, underscoring how military campaigns now begin in orbit and online before aircraft launch or missiles fire

#Spectrum showdown :
Will massive communications constellations impede weather observations?

#SpaceNews

paceX has disrupted the launch business with the Falcon 9 and the satellite communications business with Starlink. Now it may be taking aim at the emerging space situational awareness (SSA) field.

In late January, SpaceX announced Stargaze, a new #SSA service. Stargaze uses data from star tracker cameras on its Starlink satellites to track satellites and debris in low Earth orbit (LEO). The company says the nearly 10,000 Starlink satellites in orbit can provide 30 million observations of objects each day.

Since the number of objects in LEO currently number in the tens of thousands, that means each object could be detected hundreds of times a day, a quantum leap over the far less frequent detections made by ground-based telescopes and radars.

“If you know anything about SSA, that’s extraordinary,” said Marco Concha, flight dynamics engineering manager at Amazon Leo, just after the announcement. “If that’s true, this is a game changer.”

Stargaze could also be a threat to other SSA companies, though. SpaceX said it will offer Stargaze to other satellite operators for free, provided those operators are willing to share their ephemeris, or maneuver plans, for their #satellites.

“I will be keeping my eye on the impacts this and similar free services will have on smaller companies that have paid-data models,” said Gabriel Swiney of the Office of Space Commerce, which is developing the Traffic Coordination System for Space, or TraCSS, a civil space traffic coordination system.

TraCSS will use data from commercial SSA providers, and Swiney noted at the SpaceCom Expo conference that his office has a mandate to help the SSA industry grow.

There is one element missing from the discussion about the benefits and impacts of Stargaze: Are the data from it any good?

A month after the SpaceX announcement, it’s still not clear. SpaceX said it has performed a closed beta test of Stargaze with more than a dozen other operators, but has not disclosed those companies. SpaceX said it will open Stargaze to other operators in the spring.

“When [Stargaze] came out, I thought it was really amazing, but at the same time I take pause,” Moriba Jah, professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, said of Stargaze during the 12th Annual Space Traffic Conference at the university in mid-February.

The pause, he said, came from the lack of information about the service. “Where’s the independent assessment of the stuff that SpaceX is putting out there?” he asked.

He added his concern that the scale of Stargaze might make it the default SSA service. “Anyone who refutes that will be challenged to provide the burden of evidence. That’s a bad position for the space community.”

Others at the conference said it was incumbent on all SSA providers, not just SpaceX, to share information about the quality of their data.

“We have to show our work to get confidence in commercial SSA,” said Darren McKnight, senior technical fellow at LeoLabs.

More SSA data is better, but there has to be a way to validate it, noted Kevin O’Connell, a former director of the Office of Space Commerce. Simply combining data from various sources results in an answer “no better than the worst piece of information in the chain,” he warned.

Instead, he advocated for deeper integration of the data, understanding when some sensors or systems provide more accurate results and only using them at those times.

“The validation piece is a government piece,” he said.

“Validation and curation is an important role,” agreed Stewart Bain, chief executive of

NorthStar Earth & Space, a Canadian SSA company. He acknowledged that he had not thought much about who should do it, but “there’s always a role for government.”

SpaceX is motivated to make Stargaze as accurate as possible since it is also a customer of the service. But more data, and more insight into the data, is needed, Jah said.

“I ask my students, how do you know you have the world’s most accurate clock? The answer is you have hundreds of them,” he said. “Independent observation is what lends itself to credibility.”

This article first appeared in the March 2026 issue of SpaceNews Magazine

#NASA astronaut who required evacuation from ISS ‘doing very well’, The astronaut who faced a health issue prompting the first-ever medical evacuation in International Space Station history is “doing very well,” he said in a statement issued by NASA on Wednesday.

Mike Fincke, 58, said he’s “doing very well and continuing standard post-flight reconditioning” at NASA’s center in Houston.

NASA had previously declined to identify which astronaut experienced the “medical event,” the details of which they still did not disclose in Wednesday’s statement.

The health issue prompted NASA to cut short the mission of a quartet including Americans Fincke and Zena Cardman along with Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov and Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui.

Fincke said that his Jan. 7 health mishap required “immediate attention from my incredible crewmates.”

“Thanks to their quick response and the guidance of our NASA flight surgeons, my status quickly stabilized.”

The early flight home was not due to emergency, he said, but rather to “take advantage of advanced medical imaging not available on the space station.”

The crew splashed down off the California coast on Jan. 15.

“Spaceflight is an incredible privilege, and sometimes it reminds us just how human we are,” Fincke said.

#NASA targets March for first moon mission by Artemis astronauts after fueling test success.

Officials announced the decision Friday, two weeks ahead of the first targeted launch opportunity on March 6.

“This is really getting real, and it’s time to get serious and start getting excited,” said Lori Glaze, NASA’s exploration systems development chief.

Administrator Jared Isaacman noted that launch teams made “major progress” between the first countdown rehearsal, which was disrupted by hydrogen leaks earlier this month, and the second test, which was completed with exceptionally low seepage Thursday night.

The test was “a big step toward America’s return to the lunar environment,” Isaacman said on the social media platform X. Astronauts last ventured to the moon more than half a century ago.

While more work remains at the pad, officials expressed confidence in being ready to launch four astronauts on the Artemis II lunar fly-around as soon as March 6 from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. To keep their options open, the three Americans and one Canadian prepared to go into the mandatory two-week health quarantine Friday night in Houston.

The space agency has only five days in March to launch the crew aboard the Space Launch System rocket, before standing down until the end of April. February’s opportunities evaporated after dangerous amounts of liquid hydrogen leaked during the first fueling demonstration.

Technicians replaced two seals, leading to Thursday’s successful rerun. The countdown clocks went all the way down to the desired 29-second mark.

The removed Teflon seals had some light scratches but nothing else noticeable that could have caused such heavy leakage, officials said.

A bit of moisture also was found in the area that could have contributed to the problem. The fixes worked, with barely any leakage detected, said launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson.

Commander Reid Wiseman and two of his crew monitored Thursday’s operation alongside launch controllers. The astronauts will be the first to fly to the moon since Apollo 17 closed out NASA’s first chapter in moon exploration in 1972.

Still ahead is the flight readiness review, scheduled for late next week. If that goes well, the astronauts will fly back to Kennedy around the beginning of March for a real countdown.

“Every night I look up at the moon and I see it and I get real excited because I can really feel she’s calling us, and we’re ready,” Glaze said.

The nearly 10-day mission is considered a test flight with astronauts soaring atop the 322-foot (98-metre) SLS rocket for the first time. The only other SLS flight, in 2022, had no one on board.

The next mission in the series, Artemis III, will attempt to land a pair of astronauts near the moon’s south pole in a few years.

Given all the details still to be worked out for that mission — including whether Elon Musk’s SpaceX or Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin will provide the lunar lander — Glaze said it will be months, perhaps even a year, before NASA selects that first moon-landing crew.

Marcia Dunn, The Associated Press

NASA boss blasts Boeing and space agency managers for Starliner’s botched astronaut flight.

NASA’s new boss blasted Boeing and the space agency Thursday for Starliner’s botched flight that left two astronauts stuck for months at the International Space Station.

Administrator Jared Isaacman said poor leadership and decision-making at Boeing led to Starliner’s troubles. He also blamed NASA managers for failing to intervene and get Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams back more quickly.

The two test pilots, now retired from NASA, spent more than nine months at the station before catching a lift back with SpaceX last March.

Isaacman said Starliner’s problems must be better understood and fixed before any more astronauts strap in.

Isaacman upgraded the seriousness of Starliner’s troubled astronaut debut, declaring it a “Type A mishap,” something that could endanger a crew. Both the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters also involved cultural and leadership missteps. It is a mistake that Starliner was not designated a serious mishap right from the start, Isaacman said, citing internal pressure to keep Boeing on board and flights on track.

“This is just about doing the right thing,” he said. “This is about getting the record straight.”

Thruster failures and other problems almost prevented Wilmore and Williams from reaching the space station following liftoff in 2024. The thruster analyses continue by Boeing.

“We almost did have a really terrible day,” said NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya, referring to a potential loss of life.

Boeing said the report by NASA will help the company move forward in ensuring crew safety, and stressed that the Starliner program would continue.

There is no timeline for when Boeing can launch Starliner on a supply run, essentially another test flight to prove its safety before astronaut flights. The grounding leaves SpaceX as the only U.S. taxi service for astronauts.

“Boeing has made substantial progress on corrective actions for technical challenges we encountered and driven significant cultural changes across the team,” Boeing said in a statement.

Even before the troubled astronaut flight, Boeing was struggling with Starliner issues. The first test flight in 2019, without anyone on board, ended up in the wrong orbit and forced a repeat mission, which had its own difficulties.

NASA hired Boeing and SpaceX in 2014, in the wake of the space shuttles’ retirement, to ferry astronauts to and from the orbiting lab. Their contracts are worth billions. SpaceX just delivered its 13th crew to the space station for NASA since 2020.

Kshatriya said the space agency must do better moving forward.

“We have to own our part of this,” he said. As for Wilmore and Williams, “We failed them.”

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Four new astronauts arrive at the International Space Station to replace NASA’s evacuated crew.

SpaceX delivered the U.S., French and Russian astronauts a day after launching them from Cape Canaveral.

Last month’s medical evacuation was NASA’s first in 65 years of human spaceflight. One of four astronauts launched by SpaceX last summer suffered what officials described as a serious health issue, prompting their hasty return. That left only three crew members to keep the place running -- one American and two Russians -- prompting NASA to pause spacewalks and trim research.

Moving in for eight to nine months are NASA’s Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, France’s Sophie Adenot and Russia’s Andrei Fedyaev. Meir, a marine biologist, and Fedyaev, a former military pilot, have lived up there before. During her first station visit in 2019, Meir took part in the first all-female spacewalk.

Adenot, a military helicopter pilot, is only the second French woman to fly in space. Hathaway is a captain in the U.S. Navy.

“Bonjour!” Adenot called out once the capsule docked to the space station 277 miles (446 kilometres) up. Added Meir: “Grateful to be on board, and we’re ready to get to work.”

NASA has refused to divulge the identity of the astronaut who fell ill in orbit on Jan. 7 or explain what happened, citing medical privacy. The ailing astronaut and three others returned to Earth more than a month sooner than planned. They spent their first night back on Earth at the hospital before returning to Houston.

The space agency said it did not alter its preflight medical checks for their replacements.

New #astronauts launch to the International Space Station after medical evacuation.

SpaceX launched the replacements as soon as possible at NASA’s request, sending the U.S., French and Russian astronauts on an expected eight- to nine-month mission stretching until fall. The four should arrive at the orbiting lab Saturday, filling the vacancies left by their evacuated colleagues last month and bringing the space station back to full staff.

“It turns out Friday the 13th is a very lucky day,” SpaceX Launch Control radioed once the astronauts reached orbit. “That was quite a ride,” replied the crew’s commander, Jessica Meir.

NASA had to put spacewalks on hold and deferred other duties while awaiting the arrival of Americans Meir and Jack Hathaway, France’s Sophie Adenot and Russia’s Andrei Fedyaev. They’ll join three other astronauts -- one American and two Russians -- who kept the space station running the past month.

Satisfied with medical procedures already in place, NASA ordered no extra checkups for the crew ahead of liftoff and no new diagnostic equipment was packed. An ultrasound machine already up there for research went into overdrive Jan. 7 when used on the ailing crew member. #NASA has not revealed the ill astronaut’s identity or health issue. All four returning astronauts went straight to the hospital after splashing down in the Pacific near San Diego.