Category: Solar System

Our solar system

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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StarFOX autonomous satellite swarm could level up space exploration

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Scientists are trying to build a new sort of satellite, and have recently tested their idea with the Starling Formation-Flying Optical Experiment, or “StarFOX.” You may be getting flashbacks to the retro Star Fox video game series — and you’d be right to imagine this experiment as a science fiction fantasy brought into reality. There are no space-faring animals here, though. Basically, StarFOX is a quartet of small satellites that work in tandem — a satellite “swarm,” as it’s sometimes called. This concept isn’t entirely new, but there’s something that…

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Save $120 on the Celestron SkyMaster 25×100 binoculars

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The Celestron SkyMaster 25×100 binoculars are now $120 off on Amazon and we rate them as the best for magnification in our guide to the best binoculars.  In our Celestron SkyMaster 25×100 binoculars review, we found that it has an excellent, high magnification which makes viewing the stars and beyond possible and that’s partnered with high-quality optics, giving you crisp, clear views. While these aren’t suitable for hand-held, casual viewing, they do come with a tripod adaptor, which is where these binoculars excel. We think there’s a lot to like…

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Will our galaxy really collide with Andromeda? Maybe not

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Astronomers have long considered it inevitable that our home galaxy, the Milky Way, will merge with the neighboring Andromeda galaxy within the next 5 billion years. However, a new simulation suggests the chance of this clash happening comes down to a coin flip — at least, within the next 10 billion years. “I would say that the popular narrative is diminished, but not eliminated,” Manasvi Lingam, an astrobiologist at Florida Institute of Technology who was not involved with the new study, told Space.com. At about 2.5 million light-years from our…

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SpaceX stacks 2nd Starship launch tower in Texas (photos)

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SpaceX is gearing up for more-frequent launches of its Starship megarocket. The company currently sends Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, aloft from an orbital launch mount at Starbase, its site near the South Texas border city of Brownsville. But SpaceX is working to install a second launch pad at the facility, and it recently notched a big milestone toward this goal. “Second launch tower stacked as the newest addition to Starbase,” the company announced via X on Wednesday (Aug. 21), in a post that featured three…

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SpaceX shows off Dragon capsules for Polaris Dawn, Crew-9 astronaut missions (photos)

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These two Dragons are getting ready to spread their wings. SpaceX just gave us a look at the Crew Dragon capsules that will fly on the Polaris Dawn and Crew-9 astronaut missions, which are set to launch on Aug. 26 and Sept. 24, respectively. “Double Dragons readying for flight ahead of the Polaris Dawn and Crew-9 human spaceflight missions,” the company wrote in an X post on Wednesday (Aug. 21) that featured two photos of the capsules, side by side in a processing facility on Florida’s Space Coast. Polaris Dawn…

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What happens if you throw a star at a black hole? Things get messy (video)

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“What happens when you throw a star at a black hole?” It’s not a question we can physically answer here on Earth.  Thankfully, actual black holes and stars can’t be smashed together in the lab! However, scientists can use advanced supercomputer modeling to simulate a black hole ripping apart and devouring a star in a so-called “tidal disruption event” or “TDE.” Doing just that, a team of researchers led by Danel Price from Monash University has discovered that the answer to our opening question is “things get messy.”  “Black holes…

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Scientists collect high-resolution images of the North Star’s surface for 1st time

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In our solar system, scattered across one of Earth’s verdant mountains, six eggshell-white telescopes gaze into the deep universe. As one cohesive hive, the domed structures collect cosmic light to guide modern astronomers exploring space — and it is thanks to this hive that we now have a brilliant new perspective on the light that guided astronomers of the past: the North Star. Our visual knowledge of the current North Star (because of Earth’s axial wobble, the title passes to different stars over the eons) runs deep. Artists, old and…

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