SpaceX successfully completes first launch of 2022 from Florida
Friday, 07 January 2022 06:30
SpaceX kicked off a surge in launch activity Thursday with the successful launch of 49 of the company's Starlink communications satellites from Florida, heading south along the state's coastline.
Five SpaceX missions may launch in the next month on the southern polar trajectory, flying closer to the Florida coast toward Miami than most launches, according to the U.S. Space Force. Why the Webb Telescope doesn't have deployment cameras
Friday, 07 January 2022 06:30
As NASA's James Webb Space Telescope makes its way out to its intended orbit, ground teams monitor its vitals using a comprehensive set of sensors located throughout the entire spacecraft. Mechanical, thermal, and electrical sensors provide a wide array of critical information on the current state and performance of Webb while it is in space.
A system of surveillance cameras to watch deplo Debris from failed Russian rocket falls into sea near French Polynesia
Friday, 07 January 2022 06:30
The upper stage of a failed Russian Angara A5 rocket plummeted uncontrolled to Earth, crashing into open sea near French Polynesia.
The U.S. 18th Space Control Squadron confirmed the 4 p.m. Wednesday re-entry
The Persei upper stage was part of a heavy-lift rocket. The debris weighed an estimated 3.5 tons. Astronomer Jonathon McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophy New research questions 'whiff of oxygen' in Earth's early history
Friday, 07 January 2022 06:30
Evidence arguing for a "whiff of oxygen" before the Earth's Great Oxygenation Event 2.3 billion years ago are chemical signatures that were probably introduced at a much later time, according to research published in Science Advances.
The result rewinds previous research findings that atmospheric oxygen existed prior to the so-called Great Oxygenation Event-known to researchers as "GOE"- a Japan space tourist eyes Mariana Trench trip after ISS
Friday, 07 January 2022 06:30
Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa said Friday his trip into space had given him a new appreciation for Earth, and he now hopes to plunge into the ocean's forbidding Mariana Trench.
Maezawa and his assistant Yozo Hirano spent 12 days on the International Space Station last month, where they documented life in space for one million YouTube subscribers.
Speaking Friday for the first time North Korea says it tested hypersonic missile
Friday, 07 January 2022 06:30
North Korea has successfully tested a hypersonic missile, state media reported Thursday, in the first major weapons test by the nuclear-armed nation this year.
This was the second reported test of what Pyongyang claimed were hypersonic gliding missiles, as it pursues the sophisticated technology despite international sanctions and condemnation.
Hypersonic missiles move far faster and are Tiangong's robotic arm performs well in test
Friday, 07 January 2022 06:30
China's Tiangong space station conducted a test using its robotic arm to reposition the Tianzhou 2 cargo spaceship on Thursday morning, according to the China Manned Space Agency.
In a statement, the agency said that the arm secured the robotic cargo craft early on Thursday morning and began to move it to a new position at 6:12 am. Tianzhou 2 had been connected to the station's Tianhe core Metaverse gets touch of reality at CES
Friday, 07 January 2022 06:30
A jacket equipped with sensors that let wearers feel hugs or even punches in virtual reality was among the innovations giving the metaverse a more realistic edge at the Consumer Electronics Show.
"What is the metaverse if you can't feel it?" asked Jose Fuertes, founder of the Spain-based startup Owo, which made the jacket. "It's just avatars."
The "metaverse" - a parallel universe where FAST detects coherent interstellar magnetic field with a technique conceived at Arecibo
Friday, 07 January 2022 06:30
Magnetic fields are the essential, but often "secret" ingredients of the interstellar medium and the process of making stars. The secrecy shrouding interstellar magnetic fields can be attributed to the lack of experimental probes.
While Michael Faraday was already probing the link between magnetism and electricity with coils in the early 19th century in the basement of the Royal Institutio SwRI scientist helps simulate how our solar system formed from rings
Friday, 07 January 2022 06:30
A Southwest Research Institute scientist contributed to a new solar system formation model that explains the existing inner planetary distribution and the asteroid belt between the inner and outer solar system. SwRI's Dr. Rogerio Deienno, who specializes in celestial mechanics and dynamical astronomy, and his colleagues developed a model where three rings of planetesimals, the building blocks fo Space debris expert warns U.S. ‘woefully behind’ in efforts to clean up junk in orbit
Friday, 07 January 2022 00:51
The United States is a space superpower but is not doing as much as other nations to solve the problem of orbital debris, an industry expert said Jan. 6.
SpaceX kicks off 2022 with Starlink launch
Thursday, 06 January 2022 23:08
After setting a record for launch activity in 2021, SpaceX started 2022 with the Falcon 9 launch of a set of Starlink satellites Jan. 6.
Space Force to use navigation data from LEO constellations to detect electronic interference
Thursday, 06 January 2022 21:14
Under a $2 million contract from the U.S. Space Force, Slingshot Aerospace will develop an analytics tool that uses location data from commercial satellites in low Earth orbit to identify potential sources of electronic interference on the ground.
NASA to Host Coverage, Briefing for Webb Telescope’s Final Unfolding
Thursday, 06 January 2022 20:24
NASA will provide live coverage and host a media briefing Saturday, Jan. 8, for the conclusion of the James Webb Space Telescope’s major spacecraft deployments. Sending tardigrades to the stars
Thursday, 06 January 2022 16:31
No longer solely in the realm of science fiction, the possibility of interstellar travel has appeared, tantalizingly, on the horizon. Although we may not see it in our lifetimes—at least not some real version of the fictional warp-speeding, hyperdriving, space-folding sort—we are having early conversations of how life could escape the tether of our solar system, using technology that is within reach.
For UC Santa Barbara professors Philip Lubin and Joel Rothman, it's a great time to be alive. Born of a generation that saw breathtaking advances in space exploration, they carry the unbridled optimism and creative spark of the early Space Age, when humans first found they could leave the Earth.
"The Apollo moon voyages were among the most momentous events in my life and contemplating them still blows my mind," said Rothman, a distinguished professor in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, and a self-admitted "space geek."
A mere 50 years have passed since that pivotal era, but humanity's knowledge of space and the technology to explore it have improved immensely, enough for Rothman to join experimental cosmologist Lubin in considering what it would take for living beings to embark on a journey across the vast distance separating us from our nearest neighbor in the galaxy.