Copernical Team
NASA's Artemis II crew uses Iceland terrain for lunar training
Black and gray sediment stretches as far as the eye can see. Boulders sit on top of ground devoid of vegetation. Humans appear almost miniature in scale against a swath of shadowy mountains. At first glance, it seems a perfect scene from an excursion on the moon's surface … except the people are in hiking gear, not spacesuits.
Iceland has served as a lunar stand-in for training NASA astronauts since the days of the Apollo missions, and this summer the Artemis II crew took its place in that long history. NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, along with their backups, NASA astronaut Andre Douglas and CSA astronaut Jenni Gibbons, joined geology experts for field training on the Nordic island.
New video shows how tiny spacecraft will 'swarm' Proxima Centauri
Earlier this year, NASA selected a rather interesting proposal for Phase I development as part of their NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program. It's known as Swarming Proxima Centauri, a collaborative effort between Space Initiatives Inc. and the Initiative for Interstellar Studies (i4is) led by Space Initiative's chief scientist, Marshall Eubanks.
The concept was recently selected for Phase I development as part of this year's NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program.
Similar to other proposals involving gram-scale spacecraft and lightsails, the "swarming" concept involves accelerating tiny spacecraft with a laser array to up to 20% the speed of light. This past week, on the last day of the 2024 NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Symposium, Eubanks and his colleagues presented an animation illustrating what this mission will look like.
The video and their presentation provide tantalizing clues as to what scientists expect to find in the closest star system to our own.
The skies are about to get a new star as a result of a cosmic cataclysm
Any night now, the astrophysicists tell us, a new star will appear in the night sky—about as bright as the North Star—the result of a cosmic explosion in a distant constellation millennia ago.
NASA scientist Rebekah Hounsell has called it "a once-in-a-lifetime event that will create a lot of new astronomers out there."
Once you see it, however, don't get too attached to it. The so-called recurring nova star, T. Coronae Borealis, which periodically mutates into an earth-size hydrogen bomb, will flame out in less than a week. But if you're around, you'll get another shot at seeing it at the beginning of the 22nd century.
Precisely when the nova, affectionately known as T CrB in the astronomical community, will be visible is unclear, astronomers say, and nailing the timing is a bit more complicated than predicting what time the sun will rise.
It could be sometime this month, maybe even this week, or maybe not until winter. But the evidence is unmistakable that it will appear soon.
When will the star explosion happen?
It already has, about 3,000 years ago, around the time of King David (he who felled Goliath in one of the great upsets in human history); Zoroaster; the Iron Age; and the golden age of the Villanovan people, who overran northern Italy.
Polaris Dawn brings new areas of research, medical care
The launch of Polaris Dawn from Kennedy Space Center includes the first civilian commercial spacewalk and other factors that will be firsts for space medicine research. And that's why Emmanuel Urquieta, an internationally recognized space medicine expert who recently joined UCF's College of Medicine, is especially excited about this latest mission.
The spacecraft is flying up to 870 miles above Earth—the highest orbit flown in the last half century. And at that altitude, the astronauts will be exposed to higher radiation than most astronauts who stay in low Earth orbit, such as those onboard the International Space Station.
After achieving the high orbit, Polaris Dawn will come down to a lower altitude for the spacewalk.
Ariane 6 joint update report, 16 September 2024
Historic private astronaut mission ends with splashdown off Florida
The SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission, which made history when its crew conducted the first spacewalk by non-government astronauts, concluded early Sunday with a splashdown off the coast of Florida.
The Dragon spacecraft plunged into the ocean at 3:37 am (0737 GMT), a webcast of the arrival showed, with a recovery team deploying in the pre-dawn darkness to retrieve the capsule and crew.
The ca A billionaire and an engineer have completed the first private spacewalk
Two astronauts have carried out the first-ever commercial spacewalk, using new less-bulky spacesuits designed by SpaceX.
Tech billionaire Jared Isaacman (who also funded the mission) and SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis together spent almost half an hour outside their spacecraft at an altitude of some 700 km, further from Earth than any human since the Apollo Moon landings.
The brief jau Gravity study of Mars reveals hidden structures and activity beneath Olympus Mons
Recent gravity data from Mars have revealed dense, large-scale features hidden beneath the sediment of a once-extant ocean. The findings, which combine models and data from multiple Mars missions, also suggest that active processes within the planet's mantle could be driving the growth of Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the Solar System. These insights were presented at the Europlanet Scien Catch a partial lunar eclipse during September's supermoon
Get ready for a partial lunar eclipse and supermoon, all rolled into one.
The spectacle will be visible in clear skies across North America and South America Tuesday night and in Africa and Europe Wednesday morning.
A partial lunar eclipse happens when the Earth passes between the sun and moon, casting a shadow that darkens a sliver of the moon and appears to take a bite out of it.
Since the moon will inch closer to Earth than usual, it'll appear a bit larger in the sky. The supermoon is one of three remaining this year.
"A little bit of the sun's light is being blocked so the moon will be slightly dimmer," said Valerie Rapson, an astronomer at the State University of New York at Oneonta.
The Earth, moon and sun line up to produce a solar or lunar eclipse anywhere from four to seven times a year, according to NASA.
Tech billionaire returns to Earth after first private spacewalk
A billionaire spacewalker returned to Earth with his crew on Sunday, ending a five-day trip that lifted them higher than anyone has traveled since NASA's moonwalkers.
SpaceX's capsule splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico near Florida's Dry Tortugas in the predawn darkness, carrying tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, two SpaceX engineers and a former Air Force Thunderbird pilot.
They pulled off the first private spacewalk while orbiting nearly 460 miles (740 kilometers) above Earth, higher than the International Space Station and Hubble Space Telescope.
