SPACE SCIENCE REFERENCE / EST. 2026

A working archive
of spaceflight.

NASA images, mission records, live orbital data, and a few useful catalogs, gathered in one place.

BROWSE THE ARCHIVE

02 / SPACECRAFT

Mission vehicles

Six spacecraft, what they were built to do, and what they found.

03 / HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT

Astronaut profiles

Six people, the missions they flew, and roughly how far they travelled from Earth.

04 / OPEN QUESTIONS

Unusual observations.

Cases where the first explanation was incomplete, disputed, or simply wrong.

EVIDENCE STATUS

The labels describe where each case stands today. They are not probability scores, and none is presented as evidence of alien activity.

01 / RADIO SIGNALUNRESOLVED

The Wow! Signal

A powerful narrowband signal appeared for 72 seconds in 1977, rose and fell with the Big Ear telescope’s beam, and has never been detected again.

COMPETING THEORIESRare hydrogen-cloud flareTerrestrial interferenceUnidentified celestial transmitter
SETI SOURCE ↗
02 / LOST SPACECRAFTCONTACT RECOVERED

IMAGE Came Back

NASA’s IMAGE satellite went silent in 2005. An amateur astronomer unexpectedly found it transmitting again in 2018 after more than twelve years.

COMPETING THEORIESPower reset after a long eclipseFaulty solid-state power controllerIntermittent onboard failure
NASA SOURCE ↗
03 / ORBITAL DYNAMICSORIGIN DEBATED

Sedna’s Detached Orbit

Sedna follows an extremely elongated orbit far beyond Neptune. The known planets cannot easily explain how it was placed there.

COMPETING THEORIESA distant Planet NineA close stellar encounterEarly solar-cluster gravity
NASA/JPL SOURCE ↗
04 / MISSING TELEMETRYCAUSE UNCONFIRMED

Mars Observer Vanished

Contact ended in 1993 while the spacecraft’s transmitter was intentionally off, leaving investigators without telemetry from the failure itself.

COMPETING THEORIESPropulsion-system ruptureElectrical power lossComputer or transmitter failure
NASA/JPL SOURCE ↗
05 / STELLAR DIMMINGDUST FAVORED

Tabby’s Star Dims

KIC 8462852 produced deep, irregular dips in brightness unlike an ordinary planet transit. Later color data strongly favored fine dust.

COMPETING THEORIESUneven circumstellar dustComet fragmentsLarge solid structures—now disfavored
NASA/JPL SOURCE ↗
06 / INTERSTELLAR OBJECTMECHANISM DEBATED

‘Oumuamua Accelerated

The first known interstellar visitor followed a slightly non-gravitational path, yet telescopes saw no obvious comet-like coma or tail.

COMPETING THEORIESInvisible volatile outgassingRadiation pressureAn unfamiliar natural composition
NASA SOURCE ↗

05 / QUICK REFERENCE

Notable space facts.

Short, sourced facts from NASA mission and planetary records.

01

A day outlasts a year on Venus.

Venus takes 243 Earth days to rotate once, but only 225 Earth days to orbit the Sun. It also spins backward compared with most planets.

NASA SOURCE ↗
02

A teaspoon of neutron star weighs about a billion tons.

A neutron star can pack more mass than the Sun into a sphere only about 10 miles wide.

NASA SOURCE ↗
03

Mars has blue sunsets.

Fine Martian dust scatters blue light close to the Sun at sunrise and sunset, while the daytime sky appears reddish.

NASA SOURCE ↗
04

Mercury hides water ice.

Deep craters near the poles stay in permanent shadow, cold enough to preserve ice despite Mercury’s closeness to the Sun.

NASA SOURCE ↗
05

A volcano on Mars rises about three Everests high.

Olympus Mons is the largest volcano known in the solar system, with broad, surprisingly shallow slopes.

NASA SOURCE ↗

06 / EDITORIAL

Research notes
coming soon.

Long-form explainers, mission notes, and updates will be published here.

07 / COMMUNITY

Visitor guestbook.

Leave a short public comment about the archive.

MAX 280 CHARACTERS

Public comments

LOADING…

PRIVATE IMAGE UPLOAD

Add an image.

This is protected by your private upload key. The key is never saved in the browser.

WHERE
MISSION CONTEXT
VIEW FULL RESOLUTION NASA SOURCE & CREDIT ↗