NASA has awarded Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace task orders under existing contracts to advance spacewalking capabilities in low Earth orbit, as well as moonwalking services for Artemis missions.
Read MoreMonth: July 2023
New Horizons’ Infrared View
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft captured this high-resolution enhanced color view of Charon, Pluto’s largest moon, just before closest approach on July 14, 2015.
Read MoreBoom! Watch an inflatable space habitat explode during testing (video)
It’s inevitable. Testing of spaceflight hardware sometimes leads to explosive results. In the most recent example, aerospace giant Lockheed Martin recently completed a successful burst test of the company’s sub-scale inflatable space module. The test was conducted at Lockheed’s facility in Denver, Colorado, on June 14, on the same test stand used for the historic Titan rocket. Before it exploded, the inflatable module reached a pressure of 253 psi, roughly six times greater than the module’s rated operating pressure. This was the second such burst test Lockheed Martin has performed…
Read MoreJames Webb Space Telescope spots violent collision between neutron stars
Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have traced an incredibly bright gamma-ray burst (GRB) back to its source, a violent collision between two neutron stars. The ring on your finger likely contains atoms forged in neutron star collisions like this, also known as “kilonovas.” That’s because, as well as blasting out long-duration GRBs, kilonovas are believed to be the sites at which the universe’s heaviest elements, which cannot be synthesized in the nuclear furnaces at the heart of stars, are forged. These elements are theorized to be created…
Read MoreSee the Red Planet Mars shine beside the blue star Regulus tonight
The night sky makes for an interesting pairing of targets this evening (July 10). As soon as the sun sets, look to the western skies to see the Red Planet, Mars, shining steadily above the twinkling blueish star Regulus. The pair will set shortly after 10 p.m. ET (0200 GMT on July 11), so be sure to get out as soon as it gets dark. To find Mars and Regulus, it might be easiest to first spot one of the early evening sky’s brightest objects: Venus. Venus is still quite…
Read MoreThe climate of Mars changed dramatically 400,000 years ago, Chinese rover finds
China’s Zhurong Mars rover has found evidence of a dramatic shift in Mars’ climate 400,000 years ago, in the form of dark ridges laid on top of bright dunes that ripple across the sands of Utopia Planitia, which the rover is exploring. Scientists led by Li Chunlai from the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences used the rover’s instruments, coupled with high-resolution observations from China’s Tianwen-1 Mars orbiter, to take a closer look at large sand dunes near where Zhurong landed in May 2021. The crescent shape…
Read MoreMushroom-shaped superplume of scorching hot rock may be splitting Africa in 2
A giant plume of super-heated rock rising up from near Earth’s core could help explain mysterious distortions linked with a giant tear in the planet’s surface that appears to be splitting Africa in two, a recent study finds. Across the planet, huge gashes in Earth’s surface known as continental rifts are ripping landmasses apart. The largest active continental rift is the East African Rift, a network of valleys that is about 2,175 miles (3,500 kilometers) long, stretching from the Red Sea to Mozambique. Continental rifting is driven by the deformation…
Read MoreJames Webb telescope detects the earliest strand in the ‘cosmic web’ ever seen
On a clear night, it might look like the stars above are distributed more or less evenly. But that isn’t the case — all stars are part of a gigantic cosmic web that links galaxies across the universe like threads of spider’s silk, leaving unfathomably large swaths of nothingness in between. Now, in two papers published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on June 29, scientists detail evidence that this massive cosmic highway stretches back nearly to the dawn of the universe. Using data from the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers…
Read MoreYes, solar storms are increasing, but don’t lose sleep over an ‘internet apocalypse.’
Despite what many headlines have been saying, there’s no internet apocalypse on the horizon. Worries about such a months-long catastrophe began brewing on social media platforms not long after a 2021 study titled “Solar Superstorms: Planning for an Internet Apocalypse” suggested that a major solar storm could severely damage internet cables — specifically those under the sea that connect continents and help power the global internet. (The study was presented at a data communication conference in 2021 but has yet to appear in a peer-reviewed journal.) Last week, misinformation that…
Read MoreSwirls of liquid iron may be trapped inside Earth’s ‘solid’ core
Earth’s solid inner core may not be solid after all — at least not all the way through. Instead, it’s a hodgepodge patchwork of solid and liquid that reaches all the way to the center. New research based on the faint echoes of earthquake waves bouncing back to Earth’s surface from the depths of the planet suggests that the inner core is more varied than previously appreciated. The findings indicate that the inner core, which grows about a millimeter (0.04 inch) each year as the liquid outer core solidifies, may…
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