Congress raises concerns about FAA’s handling of Starship launch license violation
WASHINGTON — As SpaceX gears up for another test flight of a Starship prototype, the Federal Aviation Administration is facing new scrutiny from Congress for how it handled SpaceX’s violation of its launch license on an earlier test flight.
SPACs in Space: A New Frontier for Investment Webinar
Advances in space technologies were largely invisible to the public equity markets until July 2019, when Virgin Galactic announced its intent to go public through a merger with Social Capital Hedosophia, a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC).
Biden administration to continue the National Space Council
WASHINGTON — In the wake of speculation that there would not be a National Space Council in the Biden administration, the White House confirmed March 29 that the council will be renewed.
The administration’s decision to reestablish the council was first reported by Politico.
NASA begins final assembly of spacecraft destined for asteroid Psyche
A major component of NASA's Psyche spacecraft has been delivered to the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, where the phase known as assembly, test, and launch operations is now underway. Over the next year, the spacecraft will finish assembly and undergo rigorous checkout and testing before it's shipped to Cape Canaveral, Florida, for an August 2022 launch to the main asteroid belt.
The Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP) Chassis, crafted by Maxar Technologies' team in Palo Alto, California, is the size of a van and represents more than 80% (by mass) of the hardware that will ultimately make up the Psyche spacecraft. The large, box-shaped structure made a dramatic entrance as it rolled into the white-walled clean room of JPL's storied High Bay 1 of the Spacecraft Assembly Facility.
SpaceX says no Starship launch on Monday
SpaceX has postponed the latest test flight of its prototype interplanetary Starship rocket from the company's south Texas facility, Elon Musk said Monday.
"FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) inspector unable to reach Starbase in time for launch today," the company's founder and CEO tweeted.
"Postponed to no earlier than tomorrow."
No launch window has so far been provided for Tuesday.
The company is hoping to finally perform a successful test flight after the last three attempts ended in spectacular explosions, and had been granted a five hour window for spaceflight activities by local authorities on Monday.
Even with regular exercise, astronaut's heart left smaller after a year in space
With NASA preparing to send humans to Mars in the 2030s, researchers are studying the physical effects of spending long periods in space. Now a new study by scientists at UT Southwestern shows that the heart of an astronaut who spent nearly a year aboard the International Space Station shrank, even with regular exercise, although it continued to function well.
The results were comparable with what the researchers found in a long-distance swimmer who spent nearly half a year trying to cross the Pacific Ocean.
The study, published today in Circulation, reports that astronaut Scott Kelly, now retired, lost an average of 0.74 grams—about three-tenths of an ounce—per week in the mass of his heart's left ventricle during the 340 days he spent in space, from March 27, 2015, to March 1, 2016. This occurred despite a weekly exercise regimen of six days of cycling, treadmill, or resistance work.
SpaceX postpones Starship test flight
SpaceX postponed a test flight Monday for the company's Starship moon and Mars rocket in Boca Chica, Texas.
Company CEO Elon Musk posted on Twitter that the flight was called off because a federal inspector couldn't reach the remote site in time. Musk calls it Starbase, and it is about 23 miles east of Brownsville.
"Postponed to no earlier than tomorrow [Tuesday]" Musk wrote. SwRI scientists discover a new auroral feature on Jupiter
The SwRI-led Ultraviolet Spectrograph (UVS) orbiting Jupiter aboard NASA's Juno spacecraft has detected new faint aurora features, characterized by ring-like emissions, which expand rapidly over time. SwRI scientists determined that charged particles coming from the edge of Jupiter's massive magnetosphere triggered these auroral emissions.
"We think these newly discovered faint ultraviolet String theory solves mystery about how particles behave outside a black hole photon sphere
A paper by the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU) Director Ooguri Hirosi and Project Researcher Matthew Dodelson on the string theoretical effects outside the black hole photon sphere has been selected for the "Editors' Suggestion" of the journal Physical Review D. Their paper was published on March 24, 2021.
In a quantum theory of point particles, Black hole seeds key to galaxies behemoths
A new black hole breaks the record - not for being the smallest or the biggest - but for being right in the middle.
The recently discovered 'Goldilocks' black hole is part of a missing link between two populations of black holes: small black holes made from stars and supermassive giants in the nucleus of most galaxies.
In a joint effort, researchers from the University of Melbourne a 
