Billionaire Richard Branson reaches space in his own ship
Sunday, 11 July 2021 15:20Swashbuckling entrepreneur Richard Branson hurtled into space aboard his own winged rocket ship Sunday in his boldest adventure yet, beating out fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos.
The nearly 71-year-old Branson and five crewmates from his Virgin Galactic space tourism company reached an altitude of about 53 miles (88 kilometers) over the New Mexico desert—enough to experience three to four minutes of weightlessness and see the curvature of the Earth—and then safely glided home to a runway landing.
Branson flies to edge of space on SpaceShipTwo
Sunday, 11 July 2021 14:45SPACEPORT AMERICA, N.M. — Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson and five other people flew to the edge of space on the company’s SpaceShipTwo suborbital vehicle July 11, the culmination of an effort that started nearly 17 years ago.
Scientists solve 40-year mystery over Jupiter's X-ray aurora
Sunday, 11 July 2021 10:39A research team co-led by UCL (University College London) has solved a decades-old mystery as to how Jupiter produces a spectacular burst of X-rays every few minutes. The X-rays are part of Jupiter's aurora - bursts of visible and invisible light that occur when charged particles interact with the planet's atmosphere. A similar phenomenon occurs on Earth, creating the northern lights, but
Goldilocks planets 'with a tilt' may develop more complex life
Sunday, 11 July 2021 10:39Planets which are tilted on their axis, like Earth, are more capable of evolving complex life. This finding will help scientists refine the search for more advanced life on exoplanets. This NASA-funded research is presented at the Goldschmidt Geochemistry Conference. Since the first discovery of exoplanets (planets orbiting distant stars) in 1992, scientists have been looking for worlds wh
Icequakes likely rumble along geyser-spitting fractures in Saturn's icy moon Enceladus
Sunday, 11 July 2021 10:39Tidal stresses may be causing constant icequakes on Saturn's sixth largest moon Enceladus, a world of interest in the search for life beyond Earth, according to a new study. A better understanding of seismic activity could reveal what's under the moon's icy crust and provide clues to the habitability of its ocean. Enceladus is about 500 kilometers in diameter and almost entirely covered in
Seeing some cosmic x-ray emitters might be a matter of perspective
Sunday, 11 July 2021 10:39It's hard to miss a flashlight beam pointed straight at you. But that beam viewed from the side appears significantly dimmer. The same holds true for some cosmic objects: Like a flashlight, they radiate primarily in one direction, and they look dramatically different depending on whether the beam points away from Earth (and nearby space telescopes) or straight at it. New data from NASA's N
New radio receiver opens wider window to radio universe
Sunday, 11 July 2021 10:39Researchers have used the latest wireless technology to develop a new radio receiver for astronomy. The receiver is capable of capturing radio waves at frequencies over a range several times wider than conventional ones, and can detect radio waves emitted by many types of molecules in space at once. This is expected to enable significant progresses in the study of the evolution of the Universe a
AIRS tracks record-breaking heat wave in Pacific Northwest
Sunday, 11 July 2021 10:39An unprecedented heat wave that started around June 26 smashed numerous all-time temperature records in the Pacific Northwest and western Canada. NASA's Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS), aboard the Aqua satellite, captured the progression of this slow-moving heat dome across the region from June 21 to 30. An animation of some of the AIRS data show surface air temperature anomalies - values ab
17 years after founding Virgin Galactic, Branson bound for space
Sunday, 11 July 2021 10:39He's always dreamed of it, and in 2004 founded his own company to make it happen. On Sunday, billionaire Richard Branson will take off from a base in New Mexico aboard a Virgin Galactic vessel bound for the edge of space. The Briton is hoping to finally get the nascent space tourism industry off the ground - but also go one up on Jeff Bezos by winning the race to be the first person to
British billionaire Richard Branson plans to soar into space Sunday
Sunday, 11 July 2021 10:39British billionaire Richard Branson on Sunday plans to become the first owner of a private space company to fly into space. The flight of Branson's Virgin Galactic VSS Unity spaceship is scheduled to lift off sometime after 9 a.m. EDT from New Mexico's private Spaceport America, about 170 miles south of Albuquerque. The company's gleaming white plane, VMS Eve, will carry the spac
Reaction Engines secures new UK Government funding for Space Access Program
Sunday, 11 July 2021 10:39The 3.9 million pound grant from the UK Space Agency will support the development of Reaction Engines' ground-breaking SABRE technology, enabling low-carbon air-breathing space access propulsion technology to be applied more widely in the space sector and beyond. Science Minister Amanda Solloway and Transport Minister Rachel Maclean visited Reaction Engines at its site in Culham, Oxfordshi
At 59, Kennedy Diversifies, Flourishes as Multi-User Spaceport
Sunday, 11 July 2021 10:39In 1962 when America was going to the Moon, NASA established Kennedy Space Center in Florida as its Launch Operations Center. This month, the modernized multi-user spaceport marks its 59th anniversary while working to send Americans back to the Moon, helping grow the commercial space industry, and performing research that benefits humanity. The launch of NASA's Artemis I mission - slated t
Flight 9 was a nail-biter, but Ingenuity came through with flying colors
Sunday, 11 July 2021 10:39It has been a week of heightened apprehension on the Mars Helicopter team as we prepared a major flight challenge for Ingenuity. We uplinked instructions for the flight, which occurred Monday, July 5 at 2:03 am PT, and waited nervously for results to arrive from Mars later that morning. The mood in the ground control room was jubilant when we learned that Ingenuity was alive and well after compl
Curiosity rover finds patches of rock record erased, revealing clues
Sunday, 11 July 2021 10:39Today, Mars is a planet of extremes - it's bitterly cold, has high radiation, and is bone-dry. But billions of years ago, Mars was home to lake systems that could have sustained microbial life. As the planet's climate changed, one such lake - in Mars' Gale Crater - slowly dried out. Scientists have new evidence that super salty water, or brines, seeped deep through the cracks, between grains of
Early Earth was bombarded by series of city-sized asteroids
Sunday, 11 July 2021 10:39Scientists know that the Earth was bombarded by huge impactors in distant time, but a new analysis suggest that the number of these impacts may have been x10 higher than previously thought. This translates into a barrage of collisions, similar in scale to that of the asteroid strike which wiped out the dinosaurs, on average every 15 million years between 2.5 and 3.5 billion years ago. Some