SpaceX, NASA delay Crew-6 astronaut launch to Feb. 27

We’ll have to wait one extra day to see SpaceX’s next astronaut mission lift off. That flight, a four-person mission to the International Space Station (ISS) known as Crew-6, had been scheduled to launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida early Sunday morning (Feb. 26).  But, after a lengthy flight readiness review (FRR) on Tuesday (Feb. 21), NASA and SpaceX decided to delay the liftoff by 24 hours. The current plan calls for a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to launch Crew-6’s Dragon capsule Endeavour on Monday (Feb. 27) at…

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Colliding black holes ‘ring’ across space-time with gravitational wave ripples

When black holes collide and merge to form even more massive black holes, this violent process sends ripples surging through the very fabric of space. A new model indicates how these gravitational waves interact with each other as they spread through space-time, the unification of space and time popularized by Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity. By presenting a clearer picture of how black hole collisions set space-time “ringing,” the model could indicate how scientists on Earth can learn more about the events that launch them using gravitational wave detectors…

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Social Media Lead Courtney Lee

“I wanted to create a game because right now, a lot of what we [at NASA] make is geared toward people who already know science…But there are huge audiences out there who, like me, didn’t realize that they could love or be intrigued with NASA because it was never where they were.” – Courtney Lee, Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Social Media Lead

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Green comet seen from space by Artemis 1 moon mission cubesat (video)

Japan’s cubesat EQUULEUS, which hitched a ride to the moon aboard NASA’s Artemis 1 mission in November last year, took a video of Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) earlier this month, about two weeks after the ice ball’s closest approach to Earth.  The comet — also called the green comet for its hue or the Neanderthal comet, as it hasn’t visited Earth since the era of the Neanderthals — can be seen in the video sequence shared on Twitter as a fuzzy white dot traversing a star-studded black-and-white background. “EQUULEUS successfully…

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The Hubble Space Telescope spots three galaxies about to collide

A stunning new image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows three galaxies heading for a collision and merger. While galactic collisions are fairly common, this one is rare because each of the trio of galaxies is currently in the throes of birthing new stars. The three galaxies, seen in the constellation Boötes, will eventually merge to form a single large galaxy. In the process, the spiral structure the galaxies now exhibit will be wiped out as a result of gravitational interactions between the trio. The image shows the three galaxies,…

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