Rescuers at the Ready at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center 

3 Min Read Rescuers at the Ready at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center  Credits: NASA/Kim Shiflett If there’s an emergency at the launch pad during a launch countdown, there’s a special team engineers at Kennedy Space Center teams can call on – the Pad Rescue team. Trained to quickly rescue personnel at the launch pad and take them to safety in the event of an unlikely emergency, NASA’s Pad Rescue team at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida has been in place since the Apollo Program. Today they help support crewed…

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Rings and Things

ESA/Hubble & NASA, I. Chilingari The subject of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is situated in the Perseus Cluster, also known as Abell 426, 320 million light-years from Earth. It’s a barred spiral galaxy known as MCG+07-07-072, seen here among a number of photobombing stars that are much closer to Earth than it is. MCG+07-07-072 has quite an unusual shape for a spiral galaxy, with thin arms emerging from the ends of its barred core to draw a near-circle around its disk. It is classified as an SBc(r) galaxy: the c denotes that its…

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SpaceX launches 116 satellites on epic Transporter 11 rideshare mission, lands rocket (video)

SpaceX launched an epic rideshare mission to space today (Aug. 16). A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 116 different satellites launched on the company’s Transporter 11 mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 2:56 p.m. EDT (1856 GMT; 11:56 a.m. local time.) The first stage of Falcon 9 landed nearby the launch site roughly eight minutes after liftoff, as seen in the broadcast on X, formerly Twitter. It was the 12th successful flight for the veteran booster. SpaceX is expected to confirm the payload deployments later today. SpaceX Transporter 11 lifts…

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Angel City Brewery releases Weyland-Yutani’s Aspen Beer from 1979’s ‘Alien’

Hauling a massive processing refinery with 20 million tons of mineral ore back to Earth from deep space can be thirsty work indeed — and that’s just why the intrepid space truckin’ team of the USCSS Nostromo in the film “Alien” drinks lots of beer.  Aspen Beer, to be precise. One of the cool overlooked details in director Ridley Scott’s classic 1979 “Alien” universe is the benign prop placement of colorful cans of Aspen Beer which, according to the label, is brewed by another wholly-owned subsidiary of the nefarious Weylan-Yutani…

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NASA-Funded Research Institute Selects New Class of Space Health Fellows

Earth as viewed from the International Space Station. Credit: NASA The NASA-funded Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH) announced its selections for the institute’s 2024 postdoctoral fellowship, a space health program intended to launch the careers of a new generation of researchers tackling various challenges involved with human space exploration. The program supports early-career scientists pursuing research with the potential to reduce the health risks associated with spaceflight. Selected fellows will participate in TRISH’s Academy of Bioastronautics, a mentorship community for space health professionals, and receive a two-year salary…

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Hubble Rings in a New Galactic View

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image reveals the galaxy LEDA 857074. ESA/Hubble & NASA, I. Chilingari The subject of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is situated in the Perseus Cluster, also known as Abell 426, 320 million light-years from Earth. It’s a barred spiral galaxy known as MCG+07-07-072, seen here among a number of photobombing stars that are much closer to Earth than it is. MCG+07-07-072 has quite an unusual shape for a spiral galaxy, with thin arms emerging from the ends of its barred core to draw a near-circle around its…

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Southern California Student Wins NASA Scholarship

Brad Flick, center director at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, presents a 2024 NASA College Scholarship Award to Sabrina Redifer. From left to right are Sabrina Redifer’s parents Matthew and Saynne Redifer, Flick, Sabrina Redifer, and her sister Samantha Redifer. NASA/Steve Freeman Sabrina Redifer, a 2024 graduate of Quartz Hill High School in Lancaster, California, won a NASA College Scholarship Award. Redifer plans to major this fall in molecular, cellular, and developmental biology at the University of California, Los Angeles. She earned a 4.0 grade-point average –…

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HP Spectre x360 14 (2024) laptop review

If you’re looking for a machine to work with graphics or a convertible 2-in-1 to view media, the HP Spectre x360 14 has something for everyone.  Packaged with a digital stylus pen, it’s unchanged in its design compared to last year’s model— but that’s no bad thing. Its premium build quality and high-end feel underline a machine with plenty to offer. Geared to creatives, HP’s well-engineered device is fitted with the latest components—including a high-end Intel CPU and a whopping 32 GB RAM — and a stunning OLED display that…

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James Webb Space Telescope adds to the confusing drama of Hubble tension

It would appear that James Webb Space Telescope observations of 10 nearby galaxies suggests the Hubble tension — which is a puzzling discrepancy in measurements regarding the rate of the expansion of the universe — may not be real after all. The James Webb Space Telescope‘s observations put the average value of the Hubble constant (H0), key in determining the rate at which the universe is expanding, at 69.96 kilometers per second per megaparsec. This is indeed consistent with predictions stemming from the standard model of cosmology, which should sound…

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