Month: July 2024

‘Star Trek: Lower Decks’ Season 5 trailer launches the crew on one last wacky mission (video)

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Official Teaser Trailer | Star Trek: Lower Decks – Season 5 | StarTrek.com – YouTube Watch On Parting is such sweet sorrow, and that’ll certainly be the case when Paramount+’s “Star Trek: Lower Decks” rolls out its fifth and final season starting on Oct. 24, 2024. We’ll totally miss “Lower Decks’” zany outer space hilarity enjoyed for the past four seasons and its colorful cast of low-ranking ensigns aboard the U.S.S. Cerritos.  This past weekend during Paramount’s informative “Star Trek” Universe panel at San Diego Comic-Con, the streaming service not…

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Peekaboo!

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NASA/Bill White In this image from May 4, 2017, a rabbit is nearly obscured by grass at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Kennedy shares a border with the Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge, which is home to over 31 mammal species and hundreds of bird, fish, amphibian, and reptile species. Kennedy is responsible for more protected species than any other federal property in the continental United States, and there are diverse and varied efforts to protect and preserve ecological systems at the center while simultaneously supporting the NASA mission. Image credit: NASA/Bill…

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Watch devastating Park Fire rage in stunning satellite video

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The second-largest wildfire of 2024 continues to rage in northern California, and satellites are watching the destruction unfold. The Park Fire wildfire is currently burning north of Sacramento and has already consumed more than 560 square miles (1,455 square kilometers), an area larger than the city of Los Angeles. It is already the largest wildfire California has experienced this year. As of July 29, the fire was only 12% contained, according to InciWeb, a wildfire information service operated by the U.S. National Interagency Fire Center. As the fire continues to…

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NASA Offers Virtual Activities for 21st Northrop Grumman Resupply Mission

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Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus space freighter is pictured attached to the Canadarm2 robotic arm ahead of its release from the International Space Station’s Unity module on Tuesday, July 12, 2024. Photo credit: NASA NASA invites the public to participate in virtual activities ahead of the launch of Northrop Grumman’s 21st commercial resupply services mission for the agency.  Mission teams are targeting 11:28 a.m. EDT Saturday, Aug. 3, for the launch of the company’s Cygnus cargo spacecraft on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space…

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Managing Heat

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4 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) Science in Space: July 2024 This time of year, managing heat is on everyone’s mind. Especially now, as May 2024 marked a full year of record-high monthly temperatures – an unprecedented streak, according to scientists from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. NASA experts analyze data from thousands of land-, sea-, and sky-based instruments to calculate Earth’s global temperature. Knowing how hot it is helps scientists, health care workers, and public officials plan for and respond…

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SpaceX launches back-to-back Starlink satellite missions (photos, videos)

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SpaceX has regained its stride after a failure earlier this month. The company launched two missions on Sunday morning (July 28), lofting batches of its Starlink internet satellites from both coasts atop Falcon 9 rockets less than five hours apart.  The two liftoffs came about 24 hours after a Saturday morning (July 27) Falcon 9 launch, which was the vehicle’s return-to-flight mission after a July 11 failure. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches 23 Starlink satellites from Florida on July 28, 2024. (Image credit: SpaceX) Sunday’s first launch occurred at…

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Sierra Space won’t stop blowing up inflatable space station modules (video)

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Sierra Space has announced the completion of another full-scale burst test in which the company exploded one of its inflatable modules being developed as part of efforts to build a commercial space station. Sierra Space’s “Ultimate Burst Pressure test” was conducted on June 18, 2024 and involved an inflatable space station module built to full scale at more than 20 feet tall (6 meters). The test unit, which compares to the size of a typical family home, is about one-third the volume of the International Space Station (ISS) at 10,600…

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Earth’s plate tectonics fired up hundreds of millions of years earlier than we thought, ancient crystals reveal

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The plate tectonics that cause earthquakes, build mountains and split continents may have started when Earth was in its infancy, new research finds — significantly earlier than many scientists previously thought.  The new study suggests plate tectonics started more than 4 billion years ago — not long after the planet formed 4.5 billion years ago. In this era, known as the Hadean, Earth was fresh and piping hot, with an ammonia-and-methane atmosphere imbued with enough water to eventually condense into a planet-wide ocean. During this period, Earth cooled enough to…

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This Week In Space podcast: This Week In Space podcast: Episode 121 —An Exploding Star Near You!

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An Exploding Star Near You! – A Nova is Coming with Carlos Badenes – YouTube Watch On On Episode 121 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik discuss a star about to go nova with astrophysicist Dr. Carlos Badenes. A nova is a star that periodically sheds mass in a huge flare-up of light and energy. This nova will be visible in the night sky for about 6-7 days! T Corona Borealis (TCrB) is a binary system comprising two stars in the constellation Corona Borealis that bursts…

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‘Double’ meteor shower will light up the skies next week. Here’s how to watch.

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Stargazers will soon be able to witness a “double” meteor shower as both the Alpha Capricornids and the Southern Delta Aquariids peak next week.  The twin-skywatching event is “just an amazing coincidence,” Nicholas Moskovitz, a planetary astronomer at Lowell Observatory in Arizona, told Live Science. Meteor showers occur when Earth’s orbit intersects a comet’s path. The rocky debris left behind by the comet burns up as it enters Earth’s atmosphere. During the double meteor showers this month, Earth will cross the orbits of comet 96P/Machholz — which causes the Southern…

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