The moon and Venus join close together in the night sky Aug. 5

Few sights are as memorable as Venus, the brightest planet, passing very close to a crescent moon in a twilight sky. Such an event may have inspired the symbols on the flag of Turkey or the famous lines penned by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in “Rime of the Ancient Mariner:” Till clomb above the eastern barThe horned Moon, with one bright star Within the nether tip Unfortunately, the very close conjunction of Venus on Monday evening, Aug. 5 will prove far more challenging than most. Indeed, the moon itself will appear…

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Photographer recreates NASA’s epic Artemis 1 launch with Lego (video)

LEGO Artemis SLS Rocket Toy Photography | How It’s Made? – YouTube Watch On To glance at the images above, you’d be hard pushed to not think you were looking at a real rocket launch. But they’re actually works of art, created by Benedek Lampert using Lego’s NASA Artemis Space Launch System set. By using some clever photography techniques — and the use of some rather nifty lighting — he’s been able to create an incredible likeness without ever stepping foot near the actual NASA Artemis 1 launch. The similarity…

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This Week In Space podcast: Episode 122 —No City on Mars?

No City on Mars? – A Debate on Human Expansion and the Popular New Book, ‘A City on Mars’ – YouTube Watch On On Episode 122 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik talk with Dale Skran, COO and SVP of the National Space Society, and video producer Isaac Arthur about the realistic prospects for space settlement. It’s been said that Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids, and that’s certainly the assertion of the popular 2023 book, “A City on Mars” by Kelly…

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Earth from space: Astronauts share photography tips for snapping amazing photos from the ISS

The view from Earth looking up at the stars is an incredible one, but a select few have the chance to look down at their home planet from space and capture the incredible scenery on camera.  A recent X Spaces (formerly Twitter Spaces) event featured NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick and Don Pettit revealing the secrets of doing astrophotography from low Earth orbit. Dominick, who is currently on board the International Space Station (ISS) as part of Expedition 71, and Pettit, who will launch to the orbiting outpost in September, passed…

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Canadarm2 was not designed to catch spacecraft at the ISS. Now it’s about to grab its 50th

A Canadian robot arm on the International Space Station is days from a big milestone. MDA Space’s Canadarm2 will celebrate its 50th cosmic catch no earlier than Aug. 5, when a Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo ship berths with the International Space Station (ISS) with thousands of pounds of experiments, supplies and food for the Expedition 71 astronauts, the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) announced today (Aug. 2). Cygnus will launch to the ISS no earlier than 11:29 a.m. EDT (0329 GMT) on Aug. 3, and you can watch the mission here…

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The moon’s thin atmosphere is made by constant meteorite bombardment

It is easy to imagine the moon as an atmosphere-less hunk of rock orbiting Earth. However, while lacking breathable air, our planet’s loyal natural satellite companion does have a thin and wispy atmosphere.  Scientists have long puzzled over the existence of this tenuous atmosphere or “exosphere” and have searched for the main process that sustains it, but new research indicates that this tenuous lunar atmosphere or “exosphere” owes its existence to renewal and replenishment caused by the violent bombardment of space rocks upon the moon.  The team behind the research…

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Test your space debris catching skills in new game released by Astroscale

Space sustainability company Astroscale has launched a computer game that allows players to test their space debris catching skills in a simulation based on one of the company’s real missions.  The Space Protector game comes in different difficulties and can be played on a desktop computer or via a game console. Based on Astroscale’s planned COSMIC mission, which will attempt to remove two old, defunct British satellites from orbit later this decade, the game allows players to control a robotic arm to capture an errant piece of space junk. Astroscale,…

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Never played the Borderlands games? Here’s what you need to know ahead of the Borderlands movie

After several delays, the live-action Borderlands movie is right around the corner. While you might be curious about the Eli Roth-directed sci-fi romp, it’s easy to feel confused by the trailers if you don’t know anything about the universe nor the games serving as source material. With this primer, we hope to illuminate why we hope this flick is at least somewhat decent at bringing the Borderlands universe to life. The Borderlands video game franchise transports players to Pandora, an unruly, barely colonized planet at the edge of the known…

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Could galaxy cluster collisions be used as dark matter detectors?

Dark matter is notoriously antisocial, refusing to interact with light and “normal” matter, making it effectively invisible. But what scientists aren’t sure about is if dark matter interacts with itself. If whatever particles make up dark matter do self-interact by colliding, and possibly even annihilating one another, new research suggests that clusters of galaxies could be used as natural dark matter colliders. This dark matter detection method would hinge on two of these vast groupings of galaxies meeting and smashing into each other. As these galaxy clusters are packed with…

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‘Cosmic dawn:’ NASA’s Roman Space Telescope will get baby pictures of our universe

When it opens its eye to the cosmos, NASA‘s next big off-Earth observatory, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, will peer back to a distant period in the universe’s history called “cosmic dawn.” Though Roman’s predecessor telescopes, the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), take full advantage of the fact that the cosmos is now transparent to light, the universe wasn’t always this way. Up to around 400,000 years after the Big Bang, the cosmos was opaque, full of an obscuring “fog” of particles absorbing photons,…

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