What’s up with this weird green rock on Mars? Perseverance rover is trying to find out.

Perseverance’s laser hasn’t yet penetrated the mystery of a strange Martian rock near the rover’s new digs. NASA’s rover is waiting for its companion, the Ingenuity helicopter, to make the first-ever powered flight on another planet. Meanwhile, its instruments targeted a greenish-looking rock on the Red Planet’s surface that has the science team “trading lots of hypotheses,” according to the rover’s Twitter feed — but please don’t pick aliens as one of them. “Is it something weathered out of the local bedrock?,” a tweet the account posted on Wednesday (March…

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Elon Musk says he’s going to put Dogecoin on ‘the literal moon’

It might be April Fools’ Day for a few more hours, but this is no joke.  SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted on Thursday (April 1) he would put “a literal Dogecoin” (pronounced “dohj coin”) on the “literal moon.” SpaceX is going to put a literal Dogecoin on the literal moonApril 1, 2021 See more Although some questioned whether Musk was joking in light of it being April Fools’ Day and his reputation for making off-the-cuff remarks, others, including CNBC space reporter Michael Sheetz, suggested Musk could very well be telling…

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NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover snaps scenic selfie at ‘Mont Mercou’ (photo)

NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity recently posed for a selfie in front of a beautiful Martian rock outcrop called “Mont Mercou,” after probing the area for clues about the Red Planet’s past.  Curiosity landed inside Mars’ 96-mile-wide (154 kilometers) Gale Crater in August 2012 with a primary goal to find out if the planet is, or was, suitable for life. Earlier in March, the rover arrived at a scenic rock formation as it traversed the slopes of Mount Sharp — a 3-mile-tall (5 km) mountain located at the center of Gale…

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Lego designer reveals hidden details in new Space Shuttle Discovery set

No one at Lego told Milan Madge to begin creating a detailed model of the space shuttle. It was years before the toy company decided to produce the new NASA Space Shuttle Discovery set — released for sale at Lego Stores and on Lego.com on Thursday (April 1) — that Madge and some of his fellow Lego designers began bandying about the idea for a large-scale, toy brick version of the winged orbiter. “It started more as us just sparring and talking about how cool a Lego space shuttle in…

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