NASA Sets Coverage for Astronaut Anil Menon Launch to Space Station

NeRD

NASA astronaut Anil Menon and Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina, Soyuz MS-29 prime crew members, pose for a portrait at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Russia.  Credit: GCTC NASA astronaut Anil Menon will launch aboard the Roscosmos Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft to the International Space Station on Tuesday, July 14, accompanied by cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina, where they will join the Expedition 74 crew advancing scientific research. Menon, Dubrov, and Kikina will lift off at 10:47 a.m. EDT (7:47 p.m. Baikonur time) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome…

Read More

Wally Funk, trailblazing pilot and astronaut, passes away at 87

NeRD

Wally Funk, who flew to space at 82 after a lifetime of flying and fighting for women in aviation and aerospace, has passed away at age 87. Born in Texas in 1939, Funk was determined to take to the skies, flying as a teenager and becoming a professional aviator at the tender age of 20. Her dreams extended even beyond Earth, and in 1961 she joined the “Mercury 13” group of women who completed the testing given to NASA’s male Apollo astronauts. But Funk was the only Mercury 13 alum…

Read More

Scientists have discovered the oldest quasar ever seen, and it shines with the light of a trillion suns

NeRD

Using the European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope, astronomers have discovered a treasure trove of 31 black-hole-powered quasars in the early universe. The most impressive of these new discoveries is the most ancient and distant quasar ever seen, shining with the light of a trillion suns just 670 million years after the Big Bang. Quasars occur when supermassive black holes with masses millions or even billions of times that of the sun are surrounded by swirling disks of matter called accretion disks. As accretion disks gradually feed these central cosmic…

Read More

NASA Space Telescope Maps Magnetic Fields of ‘Lighthouse’ Pulsar

NeRD

4 Min Read NASA Space Telescope Maps Magnetic Fields of ‘Lighthouse’ Pulsar For the first time, scientists have used NASA’s IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) to directly measure the magnetic fields of PSR J1101−6101, a pulsar located within what is often referred to as the Lighthouse Nebula. The results provide new insight into the structure of some of the most extreme objects in the cosmos, as NASA continues to explore the secrets of how the universe works. A paper describing the results published Thursday in the Astrophysical Journal. Scientists have…

Read More

SpaceX wants to launch 100,000 Starlink satellites to orbit

NeRD

SpaceX is nothing if not ambitious. Elon Musk‘s company just filed an application with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to operate a 100,000-member constellation of “Gen3” satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO). This will presumably be an updated version of SpaceX’s Starlink broadband network, according to astronomer and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell, who reported the news via X today (July 9). SpaceX have filed for a 100,00 satellite “Gen3 NGSO” system. Presumably Starlink Gen3, but they don’t call it that. The sats are 2000-2500 kg, area 300 to 400…

Read More

Principal Investigator and Quality Assessment Reports Evaluate Umbra Synthetic Aperture Radar Data

NeRD

Two new reports from NASA’s Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition (CSDA) program evaluate data from the Umbra X-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite constellation for the NASA Earth science research and applications community. The results of these evaluations help to inform NASA program management and the user community about the quality of these commercial data for use in NASA science. NASA’s CSDA program released the Umbra SAR Principal Investigator Evaluation Summary and Umbra SAR Quality Assessment Reports in May 2026. (The cover of the Quality Assessment Report is shown at left.)…

Read More

Watch a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch for record-breaking 36th time early on July 9

NeRD

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch for a record-breaking 36th time early Thursday morning (July 9), and you can watch the action live. The Falcon 9 is scheduled to lift off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Thursday at 5:25 a.m. EDT (0925 GMT), carrying 29 of the company’s Starlink broadband satellites to low Earth orbit (LEO). You can watch it live via SpaceX beginning about 10 minutes before launch. This particular booster, known as 1067, has already completed 35 orbital missions, more than any other SpaceX…

Read More

Japanese company books 1,100 pounds of cargo space on SpaceX Starship mission to the moon

NeRD

ispace is expanding its already extensive moon plans to include SpaceX’s Starship megarocket. The Tokyo-based company announced today (July 8) that it has booked 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms) of cargo capacity on Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, for a moon mission that could launch as soon as 2030. The deal is worth $50 million, according to Tokyo Brief. “We are very pleased to be able to offer the new Lunar Access Integration service utilizing Starship’s payload space through our collaboration with SpaceX,” ispace founder and CEO…

Read More