SpaceX Dragon resupply mission launches today - Space News (May 12, 2026)

Let's start with what's happening right now, today. SpaceX is launching a cargo dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station as part of their commercial resupply services contract. The mission, called CRS-34, lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida with a launch window that opened at seven-sixteen PM Eastern time. The Dragon spacecraft is carrying about sixty-five hundred pounds of science equipment and supplies to astronauts aboard the station. The cargo includes biology experiments and instruments for monitoring space weather, which helps scientists better understand and predict the effects of solar activity on our satellites and power grids. Dragon will dock to the Harmony module of the space station tomorrow morning and will return to Earth in mid-June, bringing back research samples and equipment for analysis.

Moving from cargo missions to something even more dramatic, NASA's Psyche spacecraft is about to pull off a pretty impressive maneuver. On May fifteenth, just three days from now, Psyche will skim just twenty-eight hundred miles above the surface of Mars at over twelve thousand miles per hour. This isn't a mistake or a collision course. It's a carefully planned gravity assist maneuver, which essentially means Mars' gravity will act like a cosmic catapult to slingshot the spacecraft deeper into the solar system. This gravity assist saves precious fuel that the spacecraft will need for the long journey to its real destination, the asteroid Psyche in the main asteroid belt. The spacecraft won't just zip by though. The mission team will use this close approach as an opportunity to test and calibrate the spacecraft's instruments on Mars, getting a practice run before they need to do detailed observations of the asteroid when they arrive around twenty twenty-nine.

Here's something mind-boggling. Scientists working with the Vera Rubin Observatory have discovered over eleven thousand new asteroids. We're talking about eleven thousand rocky objects that nobody had catalogued before. This represents the largest single batch of asteroid discoveries submitted to the International Astronomical Union in recent years. Among these are thirty-three previously unknown near-Earth objects, which are asteroids that orbit close enough to Earth to be worth tracking. The good news? None of them pose any threat to our planet. The largest one discovered is about five hundred meters wide. These discoveries came from just one and a half months of observation data from the observatory, which tells you how powerful this new telescope really is. It's like suddenly being able to see stars you never knew existed.

If you're planning to look up at the night sky this month, we've got some excellent opportunities. The Eta Aquarid meteor shower, which is caused by Earth passing through debris left behind by Halley's Comet, peaks on May fifth and sixth. The best time to watch is in the hours before dawn when the sky is darkest. You can see up to about fifty meteors per hour under ideal conditions. Then, on May eighteenth, the Moon and Venus will make a close approach in the western sky just after sunset. The crescent Moon will help point the way to brilliant Venus, making this an easy and beautiful sight to spot. Finally, May ends with a special lunar event. On May thirty-first, we get a blue moon, which is the second full moon in a single calendar month. It's called blue moon, though it won't actually be blue, and these events happen roughly once every two to three years, hence the expression once in a blue moon.