Crew-3 astronauts on SpaceX ‘Endurance’ splash down from space station

Descending under parachutes into the Gulf of Mexico, SpaceX’s Dragon capsule “Endurance” brought four astronauts back from the International Space Station after an almost six-month stay. Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn and Kayla Barron, all of NASA, and Matthias Maurer with the European Space Agency (ESA) splashed down Friday (May 6) at 12:43 a.m. EDT (0443 GMT). The landing, off the coast of Tampa, Florida, signaled the end of the Crew-3 mission, 176 days after it began. “Thanks for letting us take Endurance on its shakedown cruise. Looking forward to watching…

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NASA will try again to fuel Artemis 1 moon rocket in June as launch slips to August

NASA will take its fourth crack at fueling up its Artemis 1 moon rocket in June that, if all goes according to plan, could set the stage for its first launch in August. The Artemis 1 stack — a huge Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with an Orion crew capsule on top — rolled out to Pad 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida in mid-March for its “wet dress rehearsal,” a crucial series of tests that includes fueling up the SLS. The wet dress began on April…

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Dark Energy Camera spies ‘galactic ballet’ of galaxies in stunning space photo

This image shows a wider view of the interacting galaxies NGC 1512 and NGC 1510 as seen by the Dark Energy Camera on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile operated by the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab. (Image credit: Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA) One of the most powerful cameras in the world just photographed two distant galaxies entwined in what’s been described as a “galactic ballet.” Part of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIRLab), the Dark Energy Camera on the…

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