Month: June 2023

Bethesda Game Studios’ upcoming space exploration game “Starfield” has outer space gamers eager to play this highly anticipated sci-fi odyssey years in the making.  This week during their “Starfield Direct” video update, Game Director Todd Howard and his core development team served up a brilliant 45-minute presentation on the overwhelming game’s expansive universe and the myriad new features, animation systems, gameplay details, characters, creatures, food, spacecraft, spacesuits, worlds, weapons and hardware rolling out for “Starfield” in September. The scale and scope of this game, where you can visit more than…

Two NASA astronauts will conduct a spacewalk outside the International Space Station on Thursday (June 15), and you can watch the excursion live. Woody Hoburg and Stephen Bowen are scheduled to begin their spacewalk Thursday at 8:55 a.m. EDT (1255 GMT). They’ll spend about six hours installing a roll-out solar array on the exterior of the International Space Station. You can watch the extravehicular activity (EVA) live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA, or directly via the space agency. Coverage will begin at 7:30 a.m. EDT (1130 GMT). Related: International…

Heatwaves on Earth may be uncomfortable and even dangerous for some, but our planet has nothing on the blisteringly hot world of WASP-76 b.  Astronomers have taken a deeper look at the exoplanet on which temperatures soar to around 4,350 degrees Fahrenheit (2,400 degrees Celsius), hot enough to vaporize iron. In the process, the team identified 11 chemical elements in the atmosphere of the planet and measured how abundant they are. Remarkably, some of the rock-forming elements detected on this distant planet haven’t even been measured in the solar system…

Viewing the Martian landscape is now easier than ever before, thanks to a new map generated from a treasure trove of data collected by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The new map, compiled with the help of supercomputers and cloud computing, provides a high-resolution, three-dimensional experience of Mars‘ otherworldly terrain. The map, processed by a team at the U.S. Geological Survey‘s (USGS) Astrogeology Science Center, consists of over 4,800 digital terrain models (DTMs) and more than 155,000 images of the Martian surface. Related: 12 amazing photos from the Perseverance rover’s 1st…

A new video from Japan-based company Astroscale demonstrates a bold new proposal for cleaning up low Earth orbit (LEO). The issue of how to mitigate and clean up space junk and orbital debris has become an increasing concern amongst spaceflight professionals and astronomers, as companies like SpaceX’s Starlink, OneWeb, Amazon Kuiper and others plan LEO satellite constellations numbering in the thousands. These satellites have fixed lifespans, and while many are designed to de-orbit themselves into a fiery death in Earth’s atmosphere, not all do so. That’s where Astroscale plans to…

Not every franchise from our childhoods needs to be rebooted. To be blunt, most Hollywood cinematic adaptations of Hasbro’s sentient robots in disguise, “The Transformers,” have been calamitous affairs highlighted by wildly convoluted plotting and rock ’em sock ’em action sequences that assault the senses in a blur of CGI punctuated by a barrage of blaring explosions. But that’s exactly what fans are ravenous for when digesting a “Transformers” blockbuster in the theater while munching a $9 bag of popcorn and sipping a $7 soda. “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts”…

The crossover we didn’t know we needed is coming to Marvel Comics. Just in case you thought the Marvel Universe needed one more lethal alien antagonist in its all-star stable, Marvel Comics is injecting the otherworldly combat skills of “The Predator” into its famed roster of iconic characters for the first time with September’s release of “Predator versus Wolverine.” Penned by comic book veteran and bestselling author Benjamin Percy (“X-Force,” “Ghost Rider”), the writer behind the current “Wolverine” series, this decades-spanning, four-issue limited series also features the dynamic artwork of…