Copernical Team
Historic private astronaut mission ends with splashdown off Florida
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
Historic private astronaut mission splashes down off Florida
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The SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission, which made history when its crew conducted the first spacewalk by non-government astronauts, splashed down off the coast of Florida early Sunday.
The Dragon spacecraft landed in the ocean at 3:37 am (0737 GMT), a webcast of the splashdown showed, with a recovery team deploying in the pre-dawn darkness to retrieve the capsule and crew.
The four-member team NASA conducts key telemedicine and health research with Polaris Dawn Crew
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NASA is set to gain significant new insights through a range of experiments aboard a commercial spaceflight, reinforcing the agency's scientific efforts as it aims for deeper space exploration to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
These experiments are part of the Polaris Dawn mission, which launched earlier today aboard SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket.
The Polaris Dawn crew Satellogic chosen for NASA's SmallSat Data Acquisition Program
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Satellogic Inc. (NASDAQ: SATL), a provider of sub-meter resolution Earth observation data, has been selected as one of eight companies awarded a contract in NASA's Commercial SmallSat Data Acquisition (CSDA) Program. The On-Ramp1 Multiple Award contract, which holds a cumulative maximum value of $476 million, was announced on September 6, 2024. This selection reflects Satellogic's dedication to Astronomers capture detailed motion of gas bubbles on a star's surface
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For the first time, astronomers have captured highly detailed images of a star, other than our Sun, that reveal the movement of bubbling gas on its surface. These observations were made using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in July and August 2023. The star, R Doradus, is located around 180 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Dorado. The images show enormous, Inouye Solar Telescope maps magnetic fields in the Sun's corona
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The U.S. National Science Foundation's (NSF) Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, operated by the NSF's National Solar Observatory (NSO), has successfully mapped the magnetic fields in the solar corona for the first time. The solar corona, visible during a total solar eclipse, is the outermost layer of the Sun's atmosphere. This achievement is expected to significantly improve our ability to unders 
