Day: February 21, 2025

What’s that smell? Astronomers discover a stinky new clue in the search for alien life

NeRD

Astronomers have discovered that sulfur may be a key to helping us narrow down our search for life on other planets. It’s not that sulfur is a great indication that a planet is inhabited. Instead, it’s the opposite: Significant amounts of sulfur dioxide in a planet’s atmosphere is a good sign that the world is uninhabitable and we can safely cross it off the list of candidates. One of the holy grails of modern astronomy is finding life on an alien planet. But that is an extremely daunting task. The…

Read More

NASA Awards Planetary Defense Space Telescope Launch Services Contract

NeRD

Credit: NASA NASA has selected SpaceX of Starbase, Texas, to provide launch services for the Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor mission, which will detect and observe asteroids and comets that could potentially pose an impact threat to Earth. The firm fixed price launch service task order is being awarded under the indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity NASA Launch Services II contract. The total cost to NASA for the launch service is approximately $100 million, which includes the launch service and other mission related costs. The NEO Surveyor mission is targeted to launch no…

Read More

Einstein wins again! Quarks obey relativity laws, Large Hadron Collider finds

NeRD

Is there a time of day or night at which nature’s heaviest elementary particle stops obeying Einstein’s rules? The answer to that question, as bizarre as it seems, could tell scientists something very important about the laws of physics governing the cosmos. In a first-of-its-kind experiment conducted at the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), scientists have attempted to discover if the universe’s heaviest elementary particle — a particle not composed of other smaller particles — always obeys Einstein’s 1905 theory of special relativity. More specifically,…

Read More

NASA Awards Delivery Order for NOAA’s Space Weather Program

NeRD

Credit: NASA NASA, on behalf of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has awarded a delivery order to BAE Systems Space & Mission Systems Inc. of Boulder, Colorado, to build spacecraft for the Lagrange 1 Series project as a part of NOAA’s Space Weather Next program. The award made under the Rapid Spacecraft Acquisition IV contract, has a total value of approximately $230.6 million with the period of performance running from February 2025 to February 2035. The work will take place at the awardee’s facility in Boulder. The firm-fixed-price…

Read More

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin targeting Feb. 25 for 10th space tourism launch

NeRD

Blue Origin is targeting next Tuesday (Feb. 25) for its 10th space tourism mission, which will send six people to the final frontier. If all goes according to plan, Blue Origin‘s suborbital New Shepard vehicle will lift off from the company’s West Texas site on Tuesday at 11:30 a.m. EST (1630 GMT; 9:30 a.m. local Texas time). You’ll be able to watch the action live, beginning 35 minutes before launch. Five of the six crewmembers who will fly on Blue Origin’s NS-30 suborbital mission. The sixth passenger has not yet…

Read More

NASA Sets Coverage for Intuitive Machines’ Next Commercial Moon Launch

NeRD

Caption: The Intuitive Machines lunar lander that will deliver NASA science and technology to the Moon as part of the agency’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative and Artemis campaign is encapsulated in the fairing of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Credit: SpaceX Carrying NASA science and technology to the Moon as part of the agency’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative and Artemis campaign, the Intuitive Machines IM-2 mission is targeted to launch no earlier than Wednesday, Feb. 26. The mission will lift off on a SpaceX Falcon 9…

Read More