China’s first large space telescope could launch as soon as 2023. The new telescope will be called the Chinese Space Station Telescope. It will be roughly comparable to NASA’s long-standing Hubble Space Telescope, though its field of view will be somewhat larger.

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China has been making big moves when it comes to space exploration. In 2021, the nation placed the first components of its new space station in orbit. Then, earlier this year, it shared plans to build an asteroid monitoring system. Now, it wants to put a telescope in space.

This week’s lunar eclipse wasn’t only observed from the ground and from the International Space Station — it was also observed from 64 million miles (100 million kilometers) away from Earth by the Lucy spacecraft. Lucy, which is an uncrewed craft from NASA and the Southwest Research Institute on its way to study the Trojan asteroids in the orbit of Jupiter, got a view of the lunar eclipse on May 15 and was able to snap images over a period of three hours which have been turned into a time-lapse video:

The images were taken using Lucy’s L’LORRI instrument which captures high-resolution black and white images. It took 86 images in total which were combined together to create the time-lapse.

Even though Lucy is far away from Earth, the instrument was sensitive enough to be able to view the moon as it passed into the Earth’s shadow and was hidden in darkness for a short time.

China and the U.S. are engaged in a new stage of the second space race, and NASA Chief Bill Nelson allegedly attributes our rival’s success to ‘stealing’.

The politics of Earth play out on the Moon, too.

China and Russia’s space agencies are planning a rival to NASA’s Lunar Gateway. Here’s what you need to know about their ambitions and timeline.

Second time’s the charm.

Orbital Flight Test-2 will test @BoeingSpace’s #Starliner spacecraft from launch to docking to return to Earth, providing data to prove it’s ready to fly astronauts. What you need to know: https://go.nasa.gov/3sNEGlI.

Watch starting at 6pm ET (22:00 UTC): https://go.nasa.gov/3NlzX2o

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is “fully deployed,” according to the agency’s science administrator Thomas Zurbuchen — and that’s certainly a reason to celebrate after decades of hard work and a ten billion dollar price tag.

But the massive space observatory isn’t out of the woods just yet. As it spins around the Sun in a chaotic orbit, it will likely encounter plenty of space debris along the way — and an impact, its team says, is likely inevitable.

“Some small impacts from micrometeorites will happen,” NASA Goddard Space Flight Center scientist Michelle Thaller said during a livestream over the weekend. “You know, over the lifetime of the mission there will be some damage to the mirrors of the telescope.”