Month: June 2024

NASA Invites Media to Watch Agency’s Break the Ice Lunar Challenge Final Phase

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3 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) NASA’s Break the Ice Lunar Challenge will conclude with a final competition, open to the public and media, this June in Huntsville, Alabama. NASA NASA will announce the winners of the final phase of its Break the Ice Lunar Challenge on Wednesday, June 12 at Alabama A&M University’s (AAMU) Agribition Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The challenge aims to develop new technologies that could support a sustained human presence on the Moon by the end of the decade. Media and…

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SPoRT Undertakes New Collaboration with the United Nations (U.N.) Satellite Centre

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Patrick Duran and Anita LeRoy (ST11) met with Samir Belabbes from the United Nations Institute for Training and Research to investigate ways for SPoRT to provide NASA remote sensing products to the UN Satellite Centre. The new collaboration springs from a presentation given by Belabbes at last year’s Joint Applications Workshop of NASA’s CYGNSS and TROPICS missions, which was organized by Duran and Jason Dunion from the University of Miami. The UN Satellite Centre maintains a 24/7 operational forecasting and disaster response center that serves UN member states. The Centre…

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‘Sudden, brief, and unexpected:’ dearMoon crew laments cancellation of private SpaceX Starship moon mission

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The dearMoon crew has shared their disappointment on social media following the mission’s abrupt cancellation.  Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa canceled his planned flight around the moon on June 1 due to delays with SpaceX’s Starship megarocket, which has yet to fly a single crewed test flight. Maezawa initially booked the private trip in 2018 and invited eight artists to join him with the expectation that the project, called dearMoon, would launch by the end of 2023.  “I can’t plan my future in this situation, and I feel terrible making the…

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Massive ‘El Gordo’ galaxy cluster suggests dark matter smashes into itself

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Strange behavior in a massive cluster of merging galaxies could be explained if dark matter, the universe’s most mysterious stuff, can collide with itself. However, the most favored model of cosmology right now is the cold dark matter (CDM) model — and it suggests that dark matter, which is effectively invisible because it doesn’t interact with light, is not self-interacting. To get to the bottom of this conundrum, researchers from the Astrophysics and Cosmology group of Italy’s Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA) set about simulating what is happening within…

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NASA’s Laser Relay System Sends Pet Imagery to, from Space Station

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Using NASA’s first two-way, end-to-end laser relay system, pictures and videos of cherished pets flew through space over laser communications links at a rate of 1.2 gigabits per second — faster than most home internet speeds. NASA astronauts Randy Bresnik, Christina Koch, and Kjell Lindgren, along with other agency employees, submitted photos and videos of their pets to take a trip to and from the International Space Station. The transmissions allowed NASA’s SCaN (Space Communications and Navigation) program to showcase the power of laser communications while simultaneously testing out a…

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Artemis II Astronauts Participate in Moon Tree Dedication Ceremony

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The Artemis II crew, NASA astronauts Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman, and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, pose for a photo after a Moon tree dedication ceremony, Tuesday, June 4, 2024, at the United States Capitol in Washington. The American Sweetgum tree planted on the southwestern side of the Capitol, was grown from a seed that was flown around the Moon during the Artemis I mission.

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SpaceX Starship launches nail-biting Flight 4 test of the world’s most powerful rocket (video, photos)

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The fourth test flight of the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built is in the books, and what a dramatic and nail-biting trip for SpaceX it was. SpaceX launched its Starship megarocket for the fourth time ever today (June 6) at 8:50 a.m. EDT (1250 GMT), sending the 400-foot-tall (122 meters) vehicle aloft from its Starbase site near Boca Chica Beach in South Texas atop a thundering pillar of fire.  There were two main goals today: bring Starship’s first-stage booster, known as Super Heavy, down for a soft splashdown…

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More people Googled ‘northern lights’ in May 2024 than in any other month in history

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The terms ‘northern lights’, ‘space weather‘ and ‘geomagnetic storm’ were googled more in May 2024 than in any other month in the search engine’s history.  With April’s total solar eclipse, and Mid-May’s widespread aurora show, public interest in the sun has been much higher than usual. As photos and discussions of the eclipse and northern lights flooded social media and secured segments on prime-time news broadcasts, Google search inquiries for these topics shot up significantly.  Using the Google Trends feature, we can utilize Google search statistics to track how public…

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The 2024 FAA Data Challenge

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The 2024 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Data Challenge ushers in a groundbreaking opportunity for university students to identify challenges and present solutions toward the evolution of the National Airspace System (NAS) into a more information-centric entity. By harnessing the power of artificial intelligence and advanced analytics, participants are invited to tackle pressing challenges within aviation safety, operational efficiency, sustainable aviation, and the exploration of novel NAS applications. This challenge not only highlights the FAA’s commitment to innovation and safety but also opens the door for the next generation of data…

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Chang’e 6 mission’s far-side moon samples enter return-to-Earth module in lunar orbit

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China’s Chang’e 6 mission continues to make history, having collected the first samples ever retrieved from the far side of the moon and now transferring those samples between spacecraft in orbit. That transfer was necessary for the next step in the samples’ journey — returning to Earth. According to the China National Space Administration (CNSA), the successful rendezvous and docking of the Chang’e 6 ascender and its orbital module took place at 2:48 p.m. Beijing time (2:48 a.m. ET; 0648 GMT) on Thursday (June 6). The safe transfer of the…

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