Are you a fan of the 1995 film water world starring Kevin Costner? Great news: There’s a distinct possibility that it’ll become a reality in the future if humanity can’t get its act together to prevent climate catastrophe! In a new paper published August 10 in the journal Nature, a team of Australian scientists found … Read more
Lucy is equipped with a pair of 22-feet-wide solar arrays on either side.Photo: NASA Just a few hours into its 12-year journey to Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids, the Lucy spacecraft ran into a problem. One of its solar arrays refused to fully open and mission controllers have been working on the problem ever since. There’s good … Read more
A Falcon 9 rocket during launch this past July. Photo: SpaceX South Korea is embarking on its first lunar mission, and SpaceX has been brought in to help. You can catch this historic launch live right here. Hard to believe, but the upcoming launch marks the first time that SpaceX will directly send a payload … Read more
The SpaceX Dragon Capsule carried four astronauts to the ISS in November 2020. Photo: NASA Pieces of debris found on Australian farmland are suspected of originating from a SpaceX mission that launched nearly two years ago. It seems likely that the parts belong to SpaceXaim the private space company has yet to own up to … Read more
In October 2020, a small spacecraft briefly touched down on an asteroid to snag a piece of it to bring to Earth. Almost two years later, scientists have learned that if the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft had extended its stay even a tiny bit longer, it would have sunk right into the asteroid. That’s because asteroid Bennu … Read more
This Chinese-made Long March 5B Y2 rocket launched in April, 2021, but this type of rocket has been cited at least twice for parts left in orbit striking the Earth upon reentry.Photo: The Yomiuri Shimbun (PA) Sorry kids, but when you’re wishing on a falling star, those flashing streaks in the night sky might actually … Read more
Aerospace engineering doctoral student Adrien Bouskela, along with aerospace and mechanical engineering professor Sergey Shkarayev, are hoping to launch their design to Mars.Photo: University of Arizona On April 19, 2021, NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter became the first powered aircraft to lift off from the surface of Mars. The historic 39-second flight set the stage for an … Read more
Conceptual image of CAPSTONE in orbit around the Moon.Image: NASA An important milestone has been reached in the newly launched CAPSTONE mission, as the tiny probe, moving in excess of 24,000 miles per hour, has escaped low Earth orbit and begun its four-month trek to the Moon. CAPSTONE, short for Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology … Read more
LightSail 2 spacecraft captured this image on June 11, 2022, which shows Madagascar and a portion of Mozambique.Image: The Planetary Society For the past three years, a tiny loaf-of-bread-sized spacecraft with gigantic wings has been sailing on sunbeams in low Earth orbit. LightSail 2 has far exceeded its life expectancy and proven that solar sails … Read more
The DART mission will be the first to test asteroid deflection through kinetic impactor technology. Drawing: NASA In order to protect the Earth, some sacrifices must be made. NASA’s DART spacecraft is currently on its way to a binary asteroid system known as Didymos and will essentially crash into one tiny asteroid to test out … Read more