Perseverance Mars rover figures out how devils and winds fill the Red Planet’s skies with dust

Large amounts of dust that help give the Red Planet Mars its butterscotch-pink sky is being blown into the atmosphere by whirling dust devils and occasional but powerful gusts of wind, NASA’s Perseverance rover has found. “The gust-driven lifting that Perseverance has detected in Jezero crater are the first really definitive dust-lifting event that we’ve seen,” Claire Newman, lead author of the study and one of the four planetary scientists that make up a research company called Aeolis Research, told Space.com. Mars is covered in fine, rust-stained dust, and regional…

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Former astronaut Mark Kelly urges action on gun control after Texas school shooting

Arizona senator and former NASA astronaut Mark Kelly said he and his wife are heartbroken by a tragic school shooting in Texas. At least 19 children and two adults died in a shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday (May 24), The New York Times reported (opens in new tab) Wednesday (May 25). The incident at Robb Elementary School is the deadliest such event in the United States since the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in Newtown, Conn. “I know how helpless a person can feel…

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Canon EOS R6 review

The Canon EOS R6 is a full-frame mirrorless camera designed for enthusiast photographers and videographers that require high-end performance. The R6 shoots 20.1 megapixel stills photos and captures 4K 60 frames per second video with Canon Log and HDR PQ to cater for even hybrid shooters that want to make movies as much as still images. When paired with an appropriate RF or even EF lens with the appropriate EOS R adapter the R6 combines in-body image stabilization with a lens’ stabilization to produce up to eight stops of stabilization,…

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James Webb Space Telescope practices tracking an asteroid for the 1st time

NASA’s next-generation space observatory successfully watched a moving asteroid as the telescope inches towards the end of its six-month commissioning period. The successful tracking of a nearby object shows that the James Webb Space Telescope can keep a watch on solar system objects as well as the distant galaxies, stars and other faraway objects it is expected to observe in its perhaps 20-year lifespan. “As we move forward through commissioning, we will test other objects moving at various speeds to verify we can study objects with Webb that move throughout…

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Launch of CAPSTONE cubesat moon mission delayed to June 6

A little spacecraft will have to wait a bit longer for its big lunar launch. The CAPSTONE mission, short for “Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment,” will now launch no earlier than June 6, NASA announced late last week (opens in new tab). “We will continually evaluate the date for the first target launch attempt within the launch period, which extends to June 22,” agency officials wrote May 20, without providing specifics on why the launch was delayed. Related: Rocket Lab and its Electron booster (photos) This is…

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