Category: Solar System

Our solar system

Aurora activity is just getting started. Here’s why the best northern lights are yet to come.

NeRD

There’s no doubt we’ve been treated to some remarkable aurora shows this year (the May superstorms and the recent strong activity in October spring to mind) but what if I told you this was only the beginning of some incredible northern lights activity? In October 2024, scientists announced that the sun has reached solar maximum, a period of heightened solar activity and sunspot frequency that occurs during the sun‘s approximately 11-year solar cycle. During the solar maximum period, the sun emits more energized particles as it erupts with coronal mass…

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Did NASA’s Viking landers accidentally kill life on Mars? Why one scientist thinks so

NeRD

In 1975, NASA’s Viking 1 spacecraft entered orbit around Mars, carrying a mission to unlock the secrets of the Red Planet. Soon, it released twin landers that drifted toward the Martian surface and eventually made history as the first American spacecraft to touch down on the world. For over six years, Viking 1 continued to orbit Mars’ Chryse Planitia region while its landers collected soil samples using robotic arms and onboard laboratories, marking a groundbreaking chapter in humanity’s exploration of the Martian environment. At the time, however, little was known…

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Blue Origin stacks huge New Glenn rocket ahead of 1st launch (photo)

NeRD

Blue Origin’s massive new rocket is getting closer to being ready to fly. The company shared a new photo of the two stages of its New Glenn rocket being joined together for the first time in the company’s facility near NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. “GS-1 meets GS-2,” the company wrote on X (formerly Twitter) in a post accompanying the photo, in reference to the first (GS-1) and second (GS-2) stages of the new rocket. New Glenn is expected to make its maiden flight sometime in November, taking…

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Could a supernova ever destroy Earth?

NeRD

When the bright star Betelgeuse explodes, it will be an impressive sight. The stellar explosion, known as a supernova, will be brighter than any planet and almost as bright as the full moon. It will be visible during the day, and you could read a book to its light at midnight. It will last a few months before fading away, as all supernovas do. But it won’t be dangerous. For that, it would have to be much, much closer; Betelgeuse is roughly 650 light-years away. So are there any stars…

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SpaceX launches 24 Starlink satellites on 2nd leg of spaceflight doubleheader

NeRD

SpaceX launched 24 of its Starlink internet satellites from Florida early this morning (Nov. 14) in the second half of a spaceflight doubleheader. A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the 24 Starlink spacecraft lifted off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station today at 8:21 a.m. EST (1321 GMT.) The four-hour launch window opened at 5:33 a.m. EST (0933 GMT) just five hours after another Falcon 9 launched 20 Starlink satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The Falcon 9’s first stage returned to Earth about eight minutes after liftoff…

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NASA dealing with aging ISS and spacewalk hardware: ‘None of our spacesuits are spring chickens’

NeRD

The commander of SpaceX’s Crew-8 astronaut mission says that NASA continues to prioritize safety while co-managing an aging space station. The International Space Station (ISS) and the spacesuit that spacewalking NASA astronauts wear, known as the extravehicular mobility unit (EMU), are both decades old. And it’s the age of this hardware that has led to issues with both recently, NASA astronaut and Crew-8 commander Matthew Dominick told reporters on Friday (Nov. 8). “None of our spacesuits are spring chickens, as we would say, and so we will expect to see…

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Trump appoints SpaceX’s Elon Musk to help head regulation-slashing ‘Department of Government Efficiency’

NeRD

Elon Musk will have a place in the second Trump administration. The SpaceX founder and CEO will lead the new “Department of Government Efficiency” along with entrepreneur and politician Vivek Ramaswamy, President-elect Donald Trump announced on Tuesday evening (Nov. 12). “Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure Federal Agencies — Essential to the Save America Movement,” Trump wrote in a statement on Tuesday (capitalization his). “It will become, potentially, ‘The Manhattan Project’ of…

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NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab laying off 5% of its workforce

NeRD

NASA’s chief center for robotic planetary exploration is conducting another round of layoffs. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California — which manages many of NASA’s high-profile robotic missions, such as the Perseverance and Curiosity Mars rovers — announced Tuesday (Nov. 12) that it will lay off about 325 employees, or roughly 5% of its workforce. “The impacts are occurring across technical, business and support areas of the Laboratory,” JPL officials wrote in an update on Tuesday. “These are painful but necessary adjustments that will enable us to adhere…

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A black hole’s secrets could hide in its dizzying light ‘echoes’

NeRD

To measure the masses and spins of black holes, scientists want to follow clues left behind by light that takes a round-a-bout journey, bends around these voids, and ultimately shines toward us. The crew, from Princeton University and Los Alamos National Laboratory, has performed complex computer simulations to show how two telescopes — one on Earth, the other in space — can work together to make the idea a reality. In other words, these devices could help us detect light that has basically been on a trip around a black…

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Top 10 best Lego deals we’ve spotted: Black Friday 2024

NeRD

Black Friday 2024 is just a matter of weeks away, and we’re already thinking about what great Lego deals we might be able to pick up. We don’t have to wait, however: there are already plenty of great deals available now, with retailers getting a head start on rolling out their Black Friday deals. Of course, we anticipate that as Black Friday gets closer, we’ll be getting more deals on space-themed Lego sets, with potentially even bigger savings to be had. But for now, you can save big, beat the…

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