Category: Solar System

Our solar system

Blue Origin’s next space tourism flight will launch on Aug. 29

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Blue Origin will launch its eighth human spaceflight this week, if all goes according to plan. Jeff Bezos‘ company is targeting Thursday (Aug. 29) for NS-26, its latest suborbital space tourism mission. The reusable New Shepard rocket-capsule combo is scheduled to lift off from Blue Origin‘s West Texas site at 9 a.m. EDT (1300 GMT; 8 a.m. local Texas time). You’ll be able to watch the action live: Blue Origin will livestream the launch, beginning at 8:20 a.m. EDT (1220 GMT). The crewmembers for NS-26, Blue Origin’s next suborbital space…

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Mattel rolling out Matchbox toy of SpaceX’s Tesla astronaut transport

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As SpaceX’s next commercial astronaut mission rolls out for launch, Mattel is counting down to the release of its latest Matchbox toy based on the space company’s vehicles. Unlike Mattel’s earlier sets, which were modeled after spacecraft and rockets, this upcoming issue is more of a natural fit for the iconic line of die-cast cars. Matchbox’s 1:64 scale version of SpaceX’s Crew Transport Vehicle is set to arrive in U.S. stores on Oct. 1 for $1.25 each. The full-size crew transport vehicles will be back in use tonight (Aug. 26),…

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Physicists find superconductor behavior at temperatures once thought ‘impossible’

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Scientists have found a key process required for superconductivity occurring at higher temperatures than previously thought. It could be a small but significant step in the search for one of the “holy grails” of physics, a superconductor that operates at room temperature. The discovery, made inside the unlikely material of an electrical insulator, reveals electrons pairing up at temperatures of up to minus 190 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 123 degrees Celsius) — one of the secret ingredients to the near-lossless flow of electricity in extremely cold superconducting materials. So far, the…

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NASA challenged the public to make ‘deep space food’ — here are the winners

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The winners The challenge began in 2021 and, to date, has included more than 300 teams from 32 countries.; the endeavor is also split between NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).Winners were selected during the first two phases of the competition, and the final, Phase 3, began in September 2023. Four American teams were awarded $50,000 each and invited to compete in the third and final phase of the competition, during which they had to construct a full-scale model of their food production system and demonstrate how it works.…

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How SpaceX’s historic Polaris Dawn private spacewalk will work

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Polaris Dawn is poised to make history. The SpaceX mission, which is scheduled to launch early Tuesday morning (Aug. 27), will send four people to orbit for five days aboard a Crew Dragon capsule. That quartet will get farther from Earth than any human since the Apollo era — and two of them will perform the first spacewalk ever conducted by a private mission. Here’s a brief rundown of what to expect during the epic Polaris Dawn spacewalk, which you’ll be able to watch live, via a SpaceX webcast. Mission…

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Boeing Starliner astronauts will return home on a SpaceX Dragon in 2025, NASA confirms

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On Saturday (Aug. 24), NASA announced its final decision regarding the fates of the two astronauts aboard the International Space Station whose original eight-day space jaunt had turned into a nebulous multi-month excursion. Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who launched to the ISS aboard Boeing’s Starliner capsule on June 5, will return home no earlier than February of 2025. Furthermore, NASA and Boeing jointly decided that Williams and Wilmore will not head back to Earth aboard the same Starliner capsule that brought them to the ISS. Rather, they will climb…

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Quantum data beamed alongside ‘classical data’ in the same fiber-optic connection for the 1st time

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Scientists have successfully transmitted quantum data and conventional data through a single optical fiber for the first time. The research demonstrates that quantum data in the form of entangled photons and conventional internet data sent as laser pulses can coexist in the same fiber-optic cable. Most research into building a quantum internet has focused on the need for separate infrastructure or dedicated channels for quantum data to avoid interference from “classical” data. But this new “hybrid” network could pave the way for more efficient implementation of quantum communications by enabling…

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SpaceX’s private Polaris Dawn mission will set altitude record for female astronauts

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Two women astronauts will set a spaceflight record next week, if all goes according to plan.  The Polaris Dawn mission is scheduled to launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket no earlier than Aug. 27. It aims to perform the first-ever private spacewalk and to fly at a higher altitude above Earth than any crewed spacecraft since the Apollo era, at about 870 miles (1,400 kilometers). The mission is funded and commanded by billionaire Jared Isaacman, who also funded and commanded the private Inspiration4 orbital mission in 2021. Polaris Dawn’s…

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Supermassive black holes have masses of more than a million suns – but their growth has slowed as the universe aged

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This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Fan Zou is a graduate student at Penn State University while W. Neil Brandt is a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State. Black holes are remarkable astronomical objects with gravity so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape them. The most gigantic ones, known as “supermassive” black holes, can weigh millions to billions times the mass of the Sun. These giants usually live in the centers of galaxies. Our own galaxy, the Milky…

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Japanese company to deorbit big hunk of space junk by 2029

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Japanese space-sustainability company Astroscale just inked a $90 million deal to take a bus-sized rocket stage out of orbit by the end of the decade. The pioneering project, funded by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), is a continuation of Astroscale’s ADRAS-J mission, which recently completed an up-close orbital inspection of a 12-year-old upper stage of a Japanese H-2A rocket. The new mission, called ADRAS-J2, will grab the 3-ton, 36-foot-long (11 meters) rocket stage using a robotic arm and pull it into Earth’s atmosphere to burn up, demonstrating a critical…

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