Items tagged with space
A former NASA engineer turned YouTuber has found a round-a-bout way to give people the opportunity to snap a selfie of themselves from space. The satellite will also send an alert to a person when it is above their location on Earth, making it possible to photobomb themselves in their own selfie from space.
Mark...
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European space companies Airbus, Thales, and Leonardo have joined forces to take on Elon Musk’s Starlink in the growing space-based internet race. Until the recent announcement of the joint venture, named Project Bromo, the satellite makers had only hinted that they were looking at working with one...
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Researchers from the Curtain node of the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) have tracked down a possible explanation for the rare astrophysical event known as long-period radio transients. Associate Professor Natasha Hurley-Walker, and Csanad Horvath, an undergraduate student at the time...
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Who doesn’t associate the roaring, and crackling sound of rocket engines with Christmas these days? For those who may, or may not, NASA wants to kick off the Christmas season with a warm and cozy 8 hour 4K fireplace video. The space agency does point out that technically the fireplace packs the heat of the SLS...
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Jupiter is well-known for its Great Red Spot, but astronomers have recently discovered equally large spots at the giant gas planet’s north and south poles that appear and disappear at random. The dark UV ovals were first spotted by NASA’s Hubble spacecraft in the late 1990s, but have only recently been studied in...
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A new image of the Sombrero galaxy from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has astronomers taking their hats off in place of a cosmic bullseye. The galaxy, known as Messier 104 (M104), was discovered in 1781 by French astronomer and comet hunter Pierre Mechain, one of Charles Messier’s colleagues.
In Webb’s image of...
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Astronomers using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (ESO’s VLTI) took the first close-up image of a dying star outside of the Milky Way. The newly imaged star, WH G64, is located within the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of the smaller galaxies that orbit the Milky Way.
While the...
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The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Solar Orbiter grabbed the highest-resolution full views of the Sun’s visible surface to date. The images were assembled using observations from the spacecraft’s PHI and EUI instruments on March 22, 2023.
The observations used to stitch together the new high-resolution images were...
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A group of USC Viterbi School of Engineering students have broken the international altitude record for a rocket, reaching further into space than any non-governmental and non-commercial group have ever flown before. The previous record of 380,000 feet stood for 20 years, before falling to the student-run group USC...
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Chinese researchers have had their first look at rock samples brought back from the far side of the Moon by its Chang’e-6 mission. The mission was China’s second excursion to the Moon’s far side, after the Chang’e-4 mission in 2019.
The Chang’e-6 spacecraft landed on the Moon’s far side in June of this year, touching...
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SpaceX’s Starship megarocket is prepped and ready for a possible sixth test flight this week. During the fifth test flight, the space company was able to achieve the first-ever booster rocket catch via chopstick arms of the mammoth Mechzilla tower.
The spectacular first catch of SpaceX’s Super Heavy booster rocket...
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The Leonid meteor shower is set to peak this weekend, sending shooting stars dashing across the night sky. The Leonids are well-known for their high-speed meteors, which can travel up to 44 miles per second.
November has been full of celestial delights already, with a Beaver supermoon, planetary views of Saturn...
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Be sure not to miss the last supermoon of the year, known as the Beaver Moon, this week. This will be the last of four consecutive supermoons, and will be slightly brighter than the first of the four in mid-August.
The term supermoon, coined in 1979, refers to when a full moon coincides with the Moon’s closest...
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NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) announced hundreds of layoffs, calling the move “painful but necessary.” The news came via a workforce statement and memo to JPL employees.
JPL has been on the forefront of space exploration for decades. It was a camera, engineered by the space agency, on Voyager 1 that was...
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It's been a while since Uranus was probed up close, but old data is proving to be quite valuable in solving a few decades old oddities. The last spacecraft that flew by Uranus was NASA’s Voyager 2 in 1986.
NASA’s Voyager 1 and 2 are the only spacecraft ever to operate outside the heliosphere, or the protective...
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Researchers from Spain’s National Archeological Museum recently discovered two objects that are part of the Treasure of Villena were forged with meteoric iron. The collection of 66 mostly golden items were discovered in the Valencia region of Spain in 1963 by Jose Maria Soler.
While the gold items in the collection...
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The United Kingdom's oldest satellite mysteriously relocated itself, and no one knows why, or who moved it. Because of the satellite’s present condition, some also consider it to be a “ticking time bomb,” that could riddle space with debris.
Not to be mistaken with Hollywood’s Skynet, British satellite Skynet- 1A...
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China’s Mars rover Zhurong has found additional evidence to support the theory that Mars was once a vast ocean world. The new findings include tracing some ancient coastlines that may have once experienced lapping ocean waves.
The data collected by the Mars rover was during the Tianwen-1 mission, and shows an...
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Earth’s Sun has been heating up as of late, reaching its 11-year solar cycle maximum in October. Because of this, the bright orb in the sky has been emitting some of the strongest solar flares recorded in the last 50 years.
Now, according to NASA, it has spewed out an intense solar flare that took out radio...
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New observations from the James Webb Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory unveiled that a low-mass supermassive black hole, known as LID-568, appears to eating up matter at over 40 times the theoretical limit. The discovery of the supermassive black hole, thought to be within 1.5 billion years after the Big...
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While October may have ended in a spectacular fashion with a headless comet meeting its demise, November promises to be just as exciting for skywatchers. Be sure to be on the lookout for three different meteor showers that promise to provide plenty of shooting stars.
The first of three upcoming meteor showers to...
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As scientists and others look at how to make Mars habitable for life in the future, NASA’s Perseverance rover remains busy exploring the Martian surface. The rover recently spotted a striped rock unlike any other on the Red Planet before, which the space agency stated possessed qualities that may be indicators of...
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