Copernical Team
EU warns Musk over 'harmful content' ahead of Trump interview
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The EU's top digital official wrote to Elon Musk Monday to remind him of his legal duty to stop "harmful content" from spreading on X, hours before the tech billionaire interviews Donald Trump live on the platform.
"With great audience comes greater responsibility," the bloc's internal market commissioner Thierry Breton posted on X, along with the letter laying out Musk's obligations to comb SpaceX performs Canaveral launch Saturday, but scrubs 2nd launch from KSC
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A Friday scrub of a launch attempt meant for a short while SpaceX was aiming to send up two of its rockets from the Space Coast within three hours of one another on Saturday morning.
The company stood down from the second launch attempt, though, and won't try to fly until at least Sunday. But the first one lifted off without a hitch.
A Falcon 9 carrying 21 of the company's Starlink internet satellites took off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station's Space Launch Complex 40 at 8:50 a.m.
SpaceX had scrubbed the Friday attempt for this mission because of booster recovery weather conditions downrange in the Atlantic.
The first-stage booster made its 21st trip to space having previously launched the Crew-3 and Crew-4 human spaceflight missions, among others. It made another recovery landing downrange in the Atlantic on the droneship Just Read the Instructions.
It's one of three boosters in SpaceX's fleet with at least 20 launches on the books. Another booster based at Cape Canaveral is the fleet leader, having already flown 22 times.
This marks the 56th launch among all providers on the Space Coast for 2024, with SpaceX responsible for all but four.
One SpaceX launch scrubbed, another still a go
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SpaceX scrubbed its planned launch of a Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida Sunday just 46 seconds before it was scheduled to blast off, the company announced.
"Vehicle and payload are in good health and teams are resetting for a launch attempt on Monday, August 12," SpaceX said in a post on X.
The launch was scheduled to carry the next in a Mars and Jupiter get chummy in the night sky. The planets won't get this close again until 2033
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Mars and Jupiter are cozying up in the night sky for their closest rendezvous this decade.
They'll be so close Wednesday, at least from our perspective, that just a sliver of moon could fit between them. In reality, our solar system's biggest planet and its dimmer, reddish neighbor will be more than 350 million miles (575 million kilometers) apart in their respective orbits.
The two planets will reach their minimum separation—one-third of 1 degree or about one-third the width of the moon—during daylight hours Wednesday in most of the Americas, Europe and Africa.
China Launches Initial Batch of Qianfan Network Satellites
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China launched 18 communications satellites from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in Shanxi province on Tuesday afternoon. The satellites, weighing a total of 4.8 metric tons, were the first group of the Qianfan network, carried by a Long March 6A rocket that launched at 2:42 pm and successfully reached their designated orbit.
The Qianfan network, developed by the Shanghai-based company Sidus Space Introduces High-Speed Switch Card for Small Satellite Market
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Sidus Space (NASDAQ: SIDU), a provider of precision space infrastructure solutions including satellite Data-as-a-Service, has announced the development of a high-speed switch card using the Frontgrade protocol-independent Crosspoint Switch. This multi-payload switch card, integrated into LizzieSat-2 (LS-2), is also available as a standalone product to support the small satellite supply chain. Detecting Supermassive Black Holes Using Smaller Black Holes
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An international team of astrophysicists, including researchers from the University of Zurich, has developed a novel method to detect pairs of supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies. This new approach involves analyzing gravitational waves generated by nearby small stellar black hole binaries.
The origin of supermassive black holes at galactic centers remains a major mystery i Cesium Unveils Comprehensive 3D Moon Terrain Dataset
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3D geospatial company Cesium has introduced Cesium Moon Terrain, a detailed and easily accessible 3D dataset of the moon.
Developed to aid NASA's Artemis mission and other space agencies worldwide, Cesium Moon Terrain is available to the public for advanced visualizations and simulations.
Cesium Moon Terrain includes precise terrain and imagery from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbite Rocket Lab and KSAT Enhance Global Satellite Communication Services
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Rocket Lab USA, Inc. (Nasdaq: RKLB) has joined forces with Kongsberg Satellite Services (KSAT) to develop an advanced global ground station service. This collaboration aims to provide efficient and reliable communications for future Neutron launches, enhanced Electron missions, and various on-orbit operations, spacecraft deorbit, and return-to-Earth missions using Rocket Lab's spacecraft. Space Rider Model Successfully Completes Drop Test
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Over the last four months, the Space Rider team has conducted a series of drop tests, using a full-scale model of their future orbital laboratory. These tests, carried out at Salto di Quirra in Sardinia, Italy, aim to validate the deployment of the spacecraft's parachutes.
The Space Rider project features an uncrewed laboratory approximately the size of two minivans, designed to remain in