Rocket Lab, the Kiwi operation working on breaking into the launch industry with small but frequent launches, has its first launch of the year today, due to take off in just a few minutes. Tune in here!
View More Watch Rocket Lab’s first launch of 2019 lift a DARPA experiment into orbitCategory: Space
Mars helicopter bound for the Red Planet takes to the air for the first time
The Mars 2020 mission is on track for launch next year, and nesting inside the high-tech new rover heading that direction is a high-tech helicopter designed to fly in the planet’s nearly non-existent atmosphere. The actual aircraft that will fly on the Martian surface just took its first flight and its engineers are over the moon.
View More Mars helicopter bound for the Red Planet takes to the air for the first timeFAA proposal aims to ‘streamline’ regulations for future space launches
On Tuesday, the FAA and Department of Transportation published a proposal that greases the wheels for the commercial space industry, long bound by outdated regulations that were not created with a modern vision of private spaceflight in mind. Last May, the Trump administration signaled its intention to ease commercial spaceflight regulations with Space Policy Directive […]
View More FAA proposal aims to ‘streamline’ regulations for future space launchesNASA pulls all-female spacewalk due to suit fitting issues
You’re just going to have to wait a little longer for an all-female spacewalk.
NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Anne McClain were scheduled to walk together in the historic moment, but NASA has pulled the event due to suit availability on the International Space Station.
Fellow NASA astronaut Nick Hague completed the first of the series of spacewalks last Friday with McClain, who found out that a particular suit size fit her best. Unfortunately, there’ll only be one suit available in this size — and it also fits Koch. Read more…
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View More NASA pulls all-female spacewalk due to suit fitting issuesIf you live in the northern U.S., you could see a radiant celestial treat Saturday night
Some of us Earthlings may see dancing, green lights in the sky on Saturday night.
The sun blasted out a flare of energized particles into space on March 20, and the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Space Prediction Center forecasts that a strip of the northern U.S. may experience a visible effect of this event: an aurora, or eerie dancing greenish light, created when the sun’s particles interact with Earth’s atmosphere.
Such an atmospheric event is stoked by a disturbance called a geomagnetic storm, where energized solar particles propel changes in Earth’s magnetosphere — a sprawling zone of space around Earth where the planet’s magnetic field changes and evolves in reaction to the sun. Read more…
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View More If you live in the northern U.S., you could see a radiant celestial treat Saturday nightNASA posts image of a powerful fireball exploding over Earth
Boom.
A radiant fireball exploded over the remote Bering Sea in Dec. 2018, though it wasn’t until some three months later that scientists, scouring satellite images, discovered the dramatic event. NASA’s Terra satellite — an Earth-observing satellite the size of a small school bus — also unwittingly documented the fiery explosion, and the space agency released photos of the meteor’s violent passage through Earth’s atmosphere on Friday.
Fireballs — which are bright meteors breaking apart in the atmosphere — are common events, though this December explosion was quite potent, as the most powerful known fireball since 2013. Read more…
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View More NASA posts image of a powerful fireball exploding over EarthNatalie Portman longs for the stars in dreamlike ‘Lucy In The Sky’ trailer
Few humans have ever faced the vastness of outer space and then had to literally come back down to Earth after. In Lucy In The Sky, Natalie Portman plays an astronaut who struggles immensely upon returning to her home planet after glimpsing the “…
View More Natalie Portman longs for the stars in dreamlike ‘Lucy In The Sky’ trailerSpaceX tests starship’s heat shield tiles
Elon Musk is determined to get to Mars and return home, but in order for a spacecraft to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere, it needs to be able to withstand the heat. Yesterday, SpaceX tested the heat shield tiles that allow the company’s Starship interpla…
View More SpaceX tests starship’s heat shield tilesSuccessful launch propels OneWeb to $1.25B in new funding
Following the successful launch and deployment of the first six satellites in a planned constellation of hundreds, OneWeb has raised $1.25 billion in funding to kickstart mass production. It’s a powerful endorsement of and ambitious plan to create an entirely new layer of global connectivity. To blanket the world in internet, OneWeb means to send […]
View More Successful launch propels OneWeb to $1.25B in new fundingOpportunity’s last Mars panorama is a showstopper
The Opportunity Mars Rover may be officially offline for good, but its legacy of science and imagery is ongoing — and NASA just shared the last (nearly) complete panorama the robot sent back before it was blanketed in dust.
View More Opportunity’s last Mars panorama is a showstopperStephen Hawking’s legacy honoured with new 50p coin
It’s hard to imagine how you’d get something as massive as a black hole onto something as small as a 50p ($0.65) coin. But the Royal Mint just did exactly that.
In honour of the renowned British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, who passed away in 2018, the Royal Mint is issuing a special coin featuring a black hole design and the equation S=kAc^3/4hG, the so-called Bekenstein–Hawking equation.
Image: royal mint
The Royal Mint shared a video of the coin on Twitter, saying that the coin is in commemoration of Hawking’s “outstanding contribution to science.” Read more…
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SpaceX makes history by completing first private crew capsule mission
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule has safely splashed down in the Atlantic, making it the first privately built crew-capable spacecraft ever to complete a mission to the International Space Station. It’s one of several firsts SpaceX plans this year, but Boeing is hot on its heels with a crew demonstrator of its own — and of course the real test is doing the same thing with astronauts aboard.
View More SpaceX makes history by completing first private crew capsule mission