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View More Jaw-dropping video shows Virgin Galactic pilots blasting into spaceCategory: Space
SpaceX launches moon lander, lands booster despite tough conditions
SpaceX had another successful launch on Thursday night, despite some tough conditions.
Its Falcon 9 launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, where a trio of spacecraft, including a moon lander, came along for the ride.
Lift off took place at 8:45 p.m. ET, at the beginning of the 32-minute launch window.
Liftoff! pic.twitter.com/Cd8nGQwrhd
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) February 22, 2019
Bad weather threatened the recovery of the first-stage booster, but after 8-and-a-half minutes following launch, the booster successfully landed on the Of Course I Still Love You droneship stationed in the Atlantic Ocean. Read more…
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View More SpaceX launches moon lander, lands booster despite tough conditionsWatch SpaceX launch the first private moon landing mission
Calling all lunatics — the first fully private moon landing mission is about to take off from Cape Canaveral. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying SpaceIL’s Beresheet lander is set to take off an hour from now, at 5:45 Pacific time. Watch it right here!
View More Watch SpaceX launch the first private moon landing missionThis space harpoon could be a solution to our growing space junk problem
The RemoveDEBRIS mission has successfully tested a harpoon that was designed to capture space junk in orbit. This marks the second successful attempt for the research team. In September 2018, they deployed a net that wrapped itself around an orbiting …
View More This space harpoon could be a solution to our growing space junk problemWatch the historic first private mission to the Moon launch Thursday night
For the first time later this week, a privately developed moon lander will launch aboard a privately built rocket, organized by a private launch coordinator. It’s an historic moment in space and the Israeli mission stands to make history again if it touches down on the Moon’s surface as planned on April 11. The Beresheet […]
View More Watch the historic first private mission to the Moon launch Thursday nightNASA posts image of ghostly blue objects, deep in the cosmos
When a star is born, a chaotic light show ensues.
NASA’s long-lived Hubble Space Telescope captured vivid bright clumps moving through the cosmos at some 1,000 light years from Earth. The space agency called these objects clear “smoking gun” evidence of a newly formed star — as new stars blast colossal amounts of energy-rich matter into space, known as plasma.
Seen as the vivid blue, ephemeral clumps in the top center of the new image below, these are telltale signs of an energy-rich gas, or plasma, colliding with a huge collection of dust and gas in deep space.
As NASA says, these blue masses are transient creations in the cosmos, as “they disappear into nothingness within a few tens of thousands of years.” Read more…
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View More NASA posts image of ghostly blue objects, deep in the cosmosDeploy the space harpoon
Watch out, starwhales.
View More Deploy the space harpoonMars looks dead, but don’t count it out just yet
Mars’ surface is a lifeless, unwelcoming desert. But beneath its red soil the planet still might be alive — geologically.
Big space news broke in 2018: Using a ground-penetrating radar aboard a Mars satellite, a group of scientists detected a thin 12-mile lake thousands of feet beneath the Martian south pole. Now, researchers have put forward a paper arguing that if there is indeed a sizable briny-lake underneath this ice cap, hot molten rock (magma) must have oozed up near the surface and melted the ice.
Such underground volcanism would have happened in geologically recent time, perhaps a few hundred thousand years ago, or less. Read more…
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View More Mars looks dead, but don’t count it out just yetWatch a space harpoon impale a piece of space debris
The U.S. government tracks 500,000 chunks and bits of space junk as they hurtle around Earth. Some 20,000 of these objects are larger than a softball.
To clean up the growing mess, scientists at the University of Surrey have previously tested a net to catch chunks of debris. Now, they’ve successfully tested out a harpoon.
The video below, released Friday by the university’s space center, shows a test of the experimental RemoveDEBRIS satellite as it unleashes a harpoon at a piece of solar panel, held out on a 1.5-meter boom.
The harpoon clearly impales its target.
“This is RemoveDEBRIS’ most demanding experiment and the fact that it was a success is testament to all involved,” Guglielmo Aglietti, director of the Surrey Space Centre at the University of Surrey, said in a statement. Read more…
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Opportunity rover’s last picture is as grim as it is dark
A mighty dust storm swirled around the Opportunity rover on June 10, 2018, forcing the robot to shut itself off and conserve power. The dust blocked out nearly all the sunlight, turning day to night.
Opportunity would never awake. On Wednesday,…
HyperSciences wants to ‘gamechange’ spaceflight with hypersonic drilling tech
It’s no coincidence that Elon Musk wants to both tunnel down into and soar above the Earth. If you ask the team at HyperSciences, the best way to get to space is to flip drilling technology upside down and point it at the sky. In the process, that would mean ditching the large, expensive fuel […]
View More HyperSciences wants to ‘gamechange’ spaceflight with hypersonic drilling techOpportunity Mars Rover goes to its last rest after extraordinary 14-year mission
Opportunity, one of two rovers sent to Mars in 2004, is officially offline for good, NASA and JPL officials announced today at a special press conference. “I declare the Opportunity mission as complete, and with it the Mars Exploration Rover mission as complete,” said NASA’s Thomas Zurbuchen.
View More Opportunity Mars Rover goes to its last rest after extraordinary 14-year mission