Experts Worried That Destroying the Space Station Will Damage the Earth’s Environment (Image Credit: futurism-com) NASA is gearing up to slowly lower the orbit of the International Space Station until it burns through the Earth’s atmosphere and drops into the ocean, starting around 2030. The agency says the station’s demise will be […]
Why we can’t just name a quasi-moon ‘Moony McMoonface’ (Image Credit: Space.com) During the summer of 2022, just after the James Webb Space Telescope started sending us a steady stream of deep-space postcards, astronomer Steven Finkelstein and his team found a mysterious red splotch in one of those data deliveries. They’d spotted […]
India delays launch of European Proba-3 satellites to Dec. 5 to create artificial eclipses in space (Image Credit: Space.com) PSLV-C59/PROBA-3 Mission – YouTube Watch On A European mission that will use two satellites to create artificial eclipses in Earth orbit will now launch early Thursday morning (Dec. 5) after a delay, and […]
Solar maximum just knocked 3 satellites out of orbit. Here’s why more may be on the way. (Image Credit: Space.com) In early November, three tiny Australian satellites from Curtin University’s Binar Space Program burned up in Earth’s atmosphere. That was always going to happen. In fact, Binar means “fireball” in the Noongar […]
Asteroid the size of 3 million elephants zooms past Earth (Image Credit: Space.com) Earth got a relatively close shave this morning (Dec. 4), as a sizable space rock zipped by just 1.4 million miles (2.2 million kilometers) away. The asteroid, called 2020 XR, made its closest approach today at approximately 12:26 a.m. […]
James Webb Space Telescope discovers 4th exoplanet in sweet triple ‘super puff’ star system (Image Credit: Space.com) Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have discovered a fourth world in a strange system of ultralight “super puff” planets. The new extrasolar planet or “exoplanet” was discovered around the sun-like star Kepler-51, […]
Behold! These gorgeous never-before-seen space images are from a NASA space telescope that should have died long ago (Image Credit: Space.com) NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) spacecraft launched to Earth orbit in 2009 and was placed in hibernation in 2011. Then, in 2013, the probe was reactivated for a new mission […]
Trump picks billionaire private SpaceX astronaut Jared Isaacman to lead NASA (Image Credit: Space.com) A billionaire tech entrepreneur and private astronaut is Donald Trump’s choice for the next NASA chief. The president-elect announced via social media today (Dec. 4) that he has picked Jared Isaacman, the founder and CEO of payment-processing company […]
Watch Vega-C Rocket Make a Long-Awaited Return After 2022 Disaster (Image Credit: Gizmodo-com) Europe’s much-needed launch vehicle Vega-C had a less-than-ideal inaugural flight, prompting a two-year hiatus to allow a redesign of the rocket’s motor nozzle. Today, Vega-C is finally ready for its highly-anticipated comeback. The European Space Agency (ESA) is gearing […]
Perseverance now arriving at Pico Turquino (Image Credit: Phys.org) NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover acquired this image following a successful 107-meter (about 351 feet) drive on sol 1332, Martian day 1,332 of the Mars 2020 mission. The rocks in the foreground are part of “Pico Turquino,” a large ridge exposed in the Jezero […]
