Space and astronomy news
If the next launch attempt of the Artemis I mission goes as planned, it should be a spectacular sight.
NASA is now targeting Monday, November 14 at just after midnight Eastern Time for the liftoff of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket carrying the Orion spacecraft. A 69-minute launch window opens at 12:07 a.m. EST.
Continue reading “A new Launch Date for Artemis 1: November 14th … at Night”
Back in August, an early release image from the James Webb Space Telescope revealed a bizarre sight: as many as 17 concentric rings encircling a binary star system, called Wolf-Rayet 140. Was it a spiral nebula, an alien megastructure or just an optical illusion?
The answer, revealed today, is dust. A new paper published in Nature Astronomy explains how stellar winds in this odd binary system blasts dust into near-perfect concentric circles every time the two stars come close to each other in their eccentric orbits.
Continue reading “These Bizarre Concentric Rings in Space are Real, Not an Optical Illusion. New Data from JWST Explains What’s Happening”
Engineers with the trouble-plagued CAPSTONE mission to the Moon have made progress in stabilizing the spacecraft. A month ago, the microwave-oven-sized CAPSTONE (Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment) began tumbling and lost its orientation in space. But now, after weeks of painstaking and patient troubleshooting, team members successfully executed an operation to stop the spacecraft’s spin. NASA says this clears a major hurdle in returning the spacecraft to normal operations.
Continue reading “Phew, NASA’s CAPSTONE is no Longer Tumbling in Space”
Space settlement proponents and science fiction fans are likely familiar with the Stanford Torus, a gigantic donut-shaped spinning space habitat that could provide Earth-like gravity and climate for as many as 140,000 people.
But you’ve never seen it like this.
Continue reading “Check out This Amazing Fly-through of a Futuristic Space Habitat”
On September 26, 2022, leaks were discovered in the underwater Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines, located near Denmark and Sweden. Both pipelines are owned by Russia and were built to transport natural gas from Russia to Germany through the Baltic Sea. Officials have said the leaks were caused by deliberate action, not accidents, and were likely intentional sabotage. While accusations have abounded, the motives behind the damage are not yet known.
Seismic disturbances in the Baltic Sea were detected, and officials said that while neither pipeline was transporting gas at the time of the blasts, they still contained pressurized methane, which is the main component of natural gas. The methane has now spewed out, producing a wide stream of bubbles on the sea surface which are visible from various satellites in Earth orbit.
Continue reading “The Methane Released From the Damaged Nord Stream Pipeline is Visible From Space”
What’s better than a pair of galaxies observed by a pair of iconic space telescopes? The answer to that, according to researchers using the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes, is finding even more galaxies and other remarkable details no one expected in the duo’s observations.
“Galaxies in the foreground, background, deep background, and into the depths,” said astronomer William Keel from Galaxy Zoo, on Twitter.
Continue reading “Webb and Hubble Work Together to Reveal This Spectacular Galaxy Pair — and Several Bonuses!”
A new crew is on the way to the International Space Station, and the crew is a true and hopeful reflection of the international nature of the station. Commander Nicole Mann become the first Native American woman in space, and she is joined by JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Koichi Wakata and Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina, as well as pilot and NASA astronaut Josh Cassada.
Continue reading “While SLS is Delayed, Crew-5 Zips in and Launches to the International Space Station”
It’s been over twenty-two years since we’ve been able to see Jupiter’s enticing moon Europa close-up. But now the Juno spacecraft has made its closest pass of Europa, sending back some amazing pictures of the icy mini-world, which likely has an ocean that contains more water than all of Earth’s oceans combined.
Observations from the spacecraft’s 45th orbit around Jupiter brought it close enough to give us some of the best views of Europa that we’ve ever had.
Continue reading “Here are the High-Resolution Images of Europa Captured by Juno During its Recent Flyby”
Edited on 10/6/22 to add new information from Seradata.
Commercial space company Firefly Aerospace successfully launched its Alpha rocket for the first time last weekend, reaching orbit and deploying three satellites. While the latest determination of the satellites’ orbit reveals they may have not been placed in the correct orbit, the company appears to consider the orbit high enough to be considered a success. But others might not agree.
This launch comes just over a year after the Alpha rocket’s first launch attempt exploded two and a half minutes after liftoff from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
Continue reading “A Year After a Failed Launch, Firefly Reaches Orbit and Deploys Satellites”
More images and details keep coming in about the asteroid intentionally smashed by NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft last week, and this latest image is stunning.
A telescope in Chile called SOAR took an image of the asteroid Dimorphos two days after the impact by DART and found the asteroid is trailing a stream of debris more than 10,000 kilometers (6,000 miles) long. However, other reports indicate that the debris trail could now be as long as 50,000 km (31,000 miles), and could still be growing.
Continue reading “After Getting Slammed by DART, Asteroid Dimorphos has Grown a Tail”