This Week’s Sky at a Glance, February 11 – 19

The Winter Hexagon hosts the Moon. Then Castor and Pollux nail the Moon. Then the Little and Big Dog stars arc gracefully away from it. Meanwhile in early dawn, Mercury, Venus and Mars continue as a triangle low in the southeast. The post This Week's Sky at a Glance, February 11 – 19 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

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The History of Rockets

The principles of rocketry were first tested more than 2,000 years ago, but it’s only been within the past 70 years or so that we have built rockets to explore space.  Today, rockets routinely loft spacecraft off Earth, sending satellites to low-Earth orbit or cargo to the International Space Station. And with the commercial space industry booming, astronauts now regularly travel to and from the orbiting lab, carrying scientific experiments with them.  New developments have even seen reusable rockets become common, landing back on Earth autonomously, ready to be used…

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‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ Star Wars spinoff series premieres May 25 on Disney Plus

Robust quarterly financials and greater-than-anticipated streaming subscribers weren’t the only major highlights of Disney’s earnings report and follow-up call on Wednesday (Feb. 9), as new details about the eagerly awaited live-action “Obi-Wan Kenobi” spinoff series on Disney Plus were revealed. Disney CEO Bob Chapek unveiled official news that the premiere date of May 25 is penciled in for the original show chronicling the Jedi master’s years in exile on Tatooine watching over Luke Skywalker and hiding out from Jedi hunters, 10 years after the events depicted in 2005’s “Star Wars:…

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Astra rocket suffers catastrophic failure in 1st Florida launch, 4 satellites lost

Astra failed to deliver four satellites to orbit as planned today (Feb. 10) in the company’s first-ever orbital launch from the contiguous United States. The California startup’s 43-foot-tall (13 meters) Launch Vehicle 0008 (LV0008) launched the ELaNa 41 mission from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station today, rising off the pad at 3 p.m. EST (2000 GMT). The two-stage LV0008 performed well initially, soaring high into the Florida skies. But something appeared to go wrong about 3 minutes into flight, just after the rocket’s first and second stages separated. Footage…

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