Category: Solar System

Our solar system

Best Alien comic books of all time

NeRD

Alien: Romulus is the shot in the arm the Alien movie franchise desperately needed, and FX’s Alien: Earth, its first-ever TV show, could keep the momentum going next year. If you’re dying to learn more about the Xenomorphs and experience wildly different tales of horror, we’ve put together our list of the best Alien comic books of all time. For decades, it was Dark Horse Comics who had the rights to both Alien and Predator in the realm of comic books, putting out several series and one-shots that were well…

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Weird mystery waves that baffle scientists may be ‘everywhere’ inside Earth’s mantle

NeRD

Mysterious zones in the deep mantle where earthquake waves slow to a crawl may actually be everywhere, new research finds. Scientists already knew that ultra-low velocity zones (ULVZs), hover near hotspots — regions of the mantle where hot rock moves upward, forming volcanic island chains such as Hawaii. But mysterious earthquake waves suggest that these features might be widespread. ULVZs, which are located in the lower mantle near the core-mantle boundary, can slow seismic waves by up to 50%. That’s remarkable, said Michael Thorne, a geologist and geophysicist at the University of Utah.…

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Astrophotographer captures Comet 13P/Olbers and the Black Eye Galaxy M64 in stunning detail (photo)

NeRD

In a race against the clock, before the entire scene set below the horizon, astrophotographer Greg Meyer managed to capture this incredible image of Comet 13P/Olbers zipping through space alongside The Black Eye Galaxy (M64). “I had only 1 night to grab this shot, and only about 1 hour to do it. It was sinking fast below the horizon after sunset,” Meyer told Space.com in an email.  On Aug. 25, Meyer was running his telescope remotely, having placed it at the Starfront Observatory located near Brady, Texas, just six weeks…

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SpaceX launches back-to-back Falcon 9 rockets within 65 minutes and aces 2 landings days after a failed booster touchdown

NeRD

SpaceX launched two Falcon 9 rockets in just over an hour early Saturday (Aug. 31) and nailed back-to-back booster landings three days after a recent failure. The two Falcon 9 launches — which lifted off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base, respectively — delivered a total of 42 Starlink internet satellites into orbit, with each rocket’s first stage acing an offshore landing. The successful SpaceX landings followed a failed Falcon 9 rocket landing on Aug. 28 during a booster’s 23rd flight, a record…

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Rocket Lab’s Mars probes reach launch site ahead of 1st flight on Blue Origin New Glenn rocket (photos)

NeRD

Two Mars-bound smallsats that will fly on the highly anticipated debut of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket have arrived at their launch site in Florida. The satellite duo, known as ESCAPADE (“Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers”), are set to launch atop New Glenn no earlier than Oct. 13 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. They’ll arrive in Mars orbit in September 2025, on a NASA mission to study how incoming charged particles from the sun interact with and alter the planet’s magnetic environment.  The two coordinated…

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This Week In Space podcast: Episode 126 —Danger! Rogue Planets!

NeRD

On Episode 126 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik talk with Rosalba Perna about errant planets. As if election season wasn’t scary enough, now we have rogue planets to worry about! Out in the vast darkness between star systems, these worlds wander through the interstellar void, sometimes in pairs, and when they encounter a solar system, havoc can result. Add to the fact that they are hard to see, and you have a recipe for worry.  Fortunately, we have astrophysicists like Dr. Rosalba Perna on the…

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SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket can return to flight, FAA says

NeRD

Well, that was quick. SpaceX can resume flying its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced this evening (Aug. 30). The news comes just two days after a Falcon 9 first stage crashed while attempting to land after a successful launch of SpaceX’s Starlink broadband satellites, spurring an investigation overseen by the FAA. That investigation is ongoing, but the agency has un-grounded the Falcon 9 nonetheless. “The SpaceX Falcon 9 vehicle may return to flight operations while the overall investigation of the anomaly during the Starlink Group…

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No, NASA’s DART asteroid impact probably won’t spark meteor showers on Earth — but maybe on Mars

NeRD

Debris from the impact of NASA’s DART spacecraft with the asteroid Dimorphos could reach Earth and Mars, astronomers have concluded. However, while the debris could result in meteors on Mars, it is rather unlikely we’ll see a meteor shower on Earth. DART, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, slammed into Dimorphos on Sept. 26, 2022, with the intention of testing whether a kinetic impact could nudge the orbit of a potentially hazardous asteroid away from Earth one day. The test passed with flying colors: Dimorphos was pushed into a shorter orbit…

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‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ has a sneaky Canadarm robot arm cameo at the end of time — but blink and you’ll miss it

NeRD

Canada’s famous robotic space arm just made a cameo on the silver screen. The iconic Canadarm briefly appears in the new film “Deadpool & Wolverine” — but not in space as you might expect. Instead, the space shuttle hardware shows up in a scene on the ground next to an unnamed villain, and bearing a big magnet on one of its ends. We won’t talk about why the arm is there because, you know, spoilers. But you can check the space arm in action quickly in the trailer. The maple-leaf-festooned Easter…

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New record: Blue Origin launches youngest woman beyond Kármán line

NeRD

Blue Origin set a new record on its latest space tourism flight. That mission, called NS-26, sent six people to suborbital space and back this morning (Aug. 29) from Blue Origin‘s West Texas spaceport, reaching a maximum altitude of 64.6 miles (104 kilometers) above ground level. One of them was Karsen Kitchen, a 21-year-old student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). According to Blue Origin, Kitchen is the youngest woman ever to cross the Kármán line, the 62-mile-high (100 km) boundary that many people regard as…

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