The 8-meter Gemini North telescope has been brought back online after seven months of repairs and refurbishment of its primary mirror. The timing couldn’t have been better, as the telescope was able to capture the brand-new supernova in the famous Pinwheel Galaxy. The bright supernova was first discovered on May 19th, and telescopes worldwide have been revealing its secrets.
Continue reading “Gemini North Returns to Service Just in Time to See a New Supernova”Phew, California’s Largest Reservoir is Nearly Full
California residents will be glad to know their reservoirs are nearly full again after years of drought. New satellite photos show the levels of Shasta Lake, California’s largest reservoir, going from 31% capacity last November to nearly 100% in May 2023. The reservoir was filled with heavy rains and a significant mountain snowpack that melted into the nearby rivers.
This is the highest levels this lake has seen in over four years, following years of persistent and extreme drought in the US southwest. Scientists are working on ways to recharge ground reservoirs with any excess water, to minimize the effect of the next inevitable drought.
Continue reading “Phew, California’s Largest Reservoir is Nearly Full”Missed the Mars Livestream? Here's the Video
When a mission to Mars reaches 20 years of service, that’s definitely reason to celebrate. ESA’s Mars Express celebrated by airing the first-ever livestream of images, sent directly from the Visual Monitoring Camera (VMC) on board the spacecraft. For an hour, it sent back images from the Red Planet in as close to real-time as the speed of light would allow.
The animated gif, above, was created from all the images that came down during that hour, roughly 50 seconds apart from each other. There’s a short break in the middle of the animation because of an unexpected rainstorm at ESA’s ground station in Cebreros, Spain, where telemetry wasn’t able to be received.
Continue reading “Missed the Mars Livestream? Here's the Video”Starliner Faces New Delays for Crewed Flights to ISS
While the SpaceX Crew Dragon is making regular trips to and from the International Space Station, the other vehicle NASA was planning to rely on for crew transportation keeps running into problems and delays. Boeing and NASA just announced another set of delays for the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft, pushing it even further back from its proposed July launch window — which was already years behind schedule.
Problems with its parachute lines and the electrical system were identified, and the program manager isn’t sure if Starliner will even fly by the end of 2023.
Continue reading “Starliner Faces New Delays for Crewed Flights to ISS”NASA's Mars Helicopter Went Silent for Six Agonizing Days
NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter on Mars has exceeded everyone’s expectations, recently completing its 51st flight when it was supposed to fly just a few times as a demonstration mission. But flights 50 and 51 almost didn’t happen.
In a recent blog post, Travis Brown, Chief Engineer for Ingenuity shared how the team lost contact with the tiny rotorcraft for six excruciating days.
Continue reading “NASA's Mars Helicopter Went Silent for Six Agonizing Days”Stratolaunch Buys Virgin Orbit's Rocket-Launching 747
With Virgin Orbit going through bankruptcy, other launch providers are purchasing various parts of the business. This week we learned that Stratolaunch’s bid to buy Virgin Orbit’s modified Boeing 747 carrier aircraft has been approved by the U.S Bankruptcy Court, enabling Stratolaunch to use the 747 to carry its Talon-A hypersonic vehicles, ideally beginning operation by 2024.
Continue reading “Stratolaunch Buys Virgin Orbit's Rocket-Launching 747”JWST Spies a Gigantic Water Plume at Enceladus
The James Webb Space Telescope has observed a huge water vapor plume emanating from Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Astronomers say the plume reaches nearly 10,000 kilometers (6,200 miles) into space, which is about the equivalent distance as going from Ireland to Japan. This is the largest plume ever detected at Enceladus.
Continue reading “JWST Spies a Gigantic Water Plume at Enceladus”China is Planning to Have Humans on the Moon by 2030
As NASA prepares to return astronauts to the Moon with Artemis III, China is ramping up its efforts for a crewed lunar landing, targeting earlier than 2030. Lin Xiqiang, the deputy director of China’s Manned Space Agency announced that the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program (CLEP) is preparing for a “short stay on the lunar surface and human-robotic joint exploration.”
Continue reading “China is Planning to Have Humans on the Moon by 2030”NASA May Have Found Hakuto-R’s Crash Site
New images from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) appear to show the crash site where the Japanese Hakuto-R Mission 1 lunar lander impacted the surface of the Moon a month ago.
The refrigerator-sized HAKUTO-R was built by the startup company iSpace and was launched in December 2022 with the goal of becoming the first commercial lunar lander to touch down safely on the Moon. However, during landing operations on April 25, 2023, communications ceased just moments before touchdown should have occurred, and the lander was presumed lost.
Continue reading “NASA May Have Found Hakuto-R’s Crash Site”After Three Years of Upgrades, LIGO is Fully Operational Again
Have you noticed a lack of gravitational wave announcements the past couple of years? Well, now it is time to get ready for an onslaught, as the Laser Interferometric Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) starts a new 20-month observation run today, May 24th after a 3-year hiatus.
LIGO has been offline for the last three years, getting some serious new upgrades. One upgrade, called “quantum squeezing,” reduces detector noise to improve its ability to sense gravitational waves.
Astronomers expect this upgrade could double the sensitivity of LIGO. This will allow black hole mergers to be seen more clearly, and it could also allow LIGO to see mergers that are fainter or farther away. Or, perhaps it could even detect new kinds of mergers that have never been seen before.
Continue reading “After Three Years of Upgrades, LIGO is Fully Operational Again”