Category: Solar System

Our solar system

Robotic Russian Progress 89 cargo ship docks at ISS with tons of fresh supplies (video)

NeRD

An uncrewed Russian cargo ship successfully docked at the International Space Station early Saturday (Aug. 17) to deliver tons of fresh gear, food and other vital supplies.  The automated Progress 89 spacecraft linked up with the International Space Station (ISS) at 1:53 a.m. EDT (0553 GMT) at the station’s Russian-built Zvezda service module as both spacecraft sailed 260 miles (418 km) over the South Pacific Ocean.  “Contact confirmed, docking confirmed,” NASA spokesperson Rob Navias said during live commentary as the Progress spacecraft arrived. “Progress has reached the International Space Station.” …

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This Week In Space podcast: Episode 124 —Space For Everyone

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Space For Everyone – A Chat with STEM Advocate Czarina Salido – YouTube Watch On On Episode 124 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik talk with Czarina Salido about the underrepresentation of women in STEM fields. Salido, a physics graduate of mixed Mexican and Native American heritage, founded Taking Up Space in 2014. This nonprofit aims to address the underrepresentation of women, particularly Native American girls, in STEM fields. Based near Tucson, the organization provides mentoring, instruction, and Space Camp scholarships to disadvantaged girls on a…

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‘Alien: Romulus’ is a visceral return to form for a venerable sci-fi franchise (review)

NeRD

Heading into the early evening IMAX screening of 20th Century Studios’ “Alien: Romulus” to experience what director Fede Álvarez had up his sleeve for this seventh film in the main Alien franchise, I was filled with trepidation and palpable anxiety.  After all, it had been seven years since Sir Ridley Scott’s “Alien: Covenant” stunk up theaters with its sick slaughterfest and his involvement in this project’s direction just didn’t have the clout it might have carried decades ago regardless of his stellar Hollywood career. Would this be more aimless mythology…

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

NeRD

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’

NeRD

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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HP Spectre x360 14 (2024) laptop review

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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

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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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The sun might’ve just had a record-breaking number of visible sunspots

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On Aug. 8, scientists may have caught hundreds of individual sunspots on images produced by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). To us, sunspots might seem really tiny — but don’t be fooled. They are actually dark areas typically the size of the entire Earth on the sun’s surface. Plus, they exhibit strong magnetic fields that can fire off solar flares, which spew pulses of electromagnetic radiation into space. These are the explosions that lead to coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that can create solar storms on Earth. “The process of the…

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Darth Jar Jar? This ‘Lego Star Wars: Rebuild The Galaxy’ trailer imagines an odd, twisted universe (video)

NeRD

LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy | Official Trailer – YouTube Watch On It’s truly a wonder that this miraculous mashup of “Star Wars” proportions has never been properly executed in any of the many media arms this omnipotent franchise occupies, but leave it to Lego to tackle the task. Let the mixing and matching begin! Last Friday, at the the D23 fan event in Southern California, a new trailer for “Lego Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy” was revealed that doubles down on the crazy concept of an alternate “Star…

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Will Boeing’s Starliner astronauts ride a SpaceX Dragon home in 2025? NASA could decide next week

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Boeing’s two Starliner astronauts may learn their fate in the next two weeks — but, for now, NASA still doesn’t know when the duo is coming home.  So, while the space agency’s best and brightest works with Boeing engineers to continue assessing data from ground tests of Starliner’s systems, the spacecraft’s crew, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams, will remain aboard the International Space Station (ISS) for now. Wilmore and Williams launched to the ISS aboard Starliner for the spacecraft’s Crew Flight Test (CFT) on June 5. Their mission,…

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