Satellite photos show Dixie Fire’s devastation to California town in before-and-after views

The ashes of a California town spotted from orbit Monday (Aug. 9) show the devastating impact of the ongoing Dixie wildfire in the United States west. At least 75 percent of Greenville, Calif. succumbed after the massive blaze tore through the town, according to NBC News. Satellite imagery from Maxar Technologies shows just how badly the town was hurt. Maxar’s WorldView-1 satellite collected black-and-white satellite imagery that shows how the town looks as the smoke clears. Other Maxar imagery provided color infrared data as the fire ripped through the town;…

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You can watch an Arianespace Vega rocket launch 5 satellites into space tonight. Here’s how.

Editor’s note: Arianespace’s Vega VV19 launch webcast will appear here at launch time. Arianespace will launch a new Earth observation satellite for Airbus today (Aug. 15), along with four other tiny satellites and you can watch the liftoff live online. An Arianespace Vega rocket, designated VV19, will launch the Pléiades Neo 4 satellites and a quartet of cubesats from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana in South America at 9:47 p.m. EDT (0147 Aug. 16 GMT). You can watch the launch live on this page on Space.com, courtesy…

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Take a sneak peek at Disney’s Space 220 restaurant at Epcot ahead of its launch next month

The countdown is back on for your chance to dine in Earth orbit. Walt Disney World Resort has set mid-September for the highly-anticipated and long-awaited opening of Space 220, a new restaurant at Epcot set aboard a space station high above the planet. “Beginning with a trip in the first-ever space elevator, travel 220 miles above the Earth at this new restaurant that fits perfectly in our EPCOT story!” Disney Imagineer Zach Riddley wrote on Instagram, sharing a video preview of Space 220 on Friday (Aug. 13). “This immersive experience…

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Orionid meteor shower 2021: When, where & how to see it

The Orionid meteor shower will peak on in the early morning of Wednesday, Oct. 20, but the moon will be full on the same night and will likely wash out the display. This year skywatchers in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres can expect to see rates of up to 20 meteors per hour, but only under the best conditions away from city lights.  “The Orionids are going to, frankly, suck this year … the moon will be up all night, from sunset to sunrise,” NASA meteor expert Bill Cooke…

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Two planes report ‘bright green UFO’ swooping through the clouds over Canada

Late on July 30, pilots of two separate aircrafts — one military and one commercial — reported seeing a mysterious green UFO vanish into the clouds over the Gulf of Saint Lawrence on the Atlantic coast of Canada, Vice News reported. According to a report posted Aug. 11 to the Canadian government’s aviation incident database, both flights witnessed a “bright green flying object” that “flew into a cloud, then disappeared.” The object did not impact the operations of either flight, the report noted. One of the aircrafts that reported the…

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July 2021 was officially the hottest month ever

July 2021 was officially the hottest month in recorded history, according to new data released Friday (Aug. 13) by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Last month, the combined land and ocean-surface temperature was 1.67 degrees Fahrenheit (0.93 degrees Celsius) higher than the 20th-century average, blowing past the previous July heat record tied in July 2016, July 2019 and July 2020. But July 2021 was not only the hottest July ever — it was also the single hottest month since record keeping began 142 years ago, NOAA found. “In…

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See the first ‘Blade Runner: Black Lotus’ trailer and catch a sneak peek at the opening minutes

[embedded content] The “Blade Runner” universe is a relatively smaller one than say, “Star Wars,” “Star Trek,” Marvel or DC, but that’s not to say it isn’t as interesting. Quite the contrary, events seen in both the original 1981 movie and the truly epic 2017 sequel have spawned a number of short films and spin-off comic books and at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con@Home event, we finally saw the first trailer for “Blade Runner: Black Lotus.”  First announced way back in November 2018, this is the result of a partnership…

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Boeing’s Starliner launch, a critical test flight for NASA, delayed indefinitely as capsule heads back to factory

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft won’t be flying to the International Space Station on a crucial NASA test flight this month after all.  After a series of delays that began with a Russian module mishap at the International Space Station (ISS) on Starliner’s planned July 30 launch date, followed by the discovery that 12 valves on the Starliner spacecraft were not functioning properly during preflight checks, Boeing announced on Friday (Aug. 13) that it would stand down from the current launch window. A new timeframe for the launch has not yet been…

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