Category: Solar System

Our solar system

Lego Star Wars Millennium Falcon (2024) review

NeRD

Essential info: Price: $84.99/£74.99 Model number: 75375 Number of pieces: 921 Dimensions: 5 x 9.5 x 7.5 inches / 13 x 24 x 19cm Recommended age: 18+ We’ve counted and, not including various freebies, magazine giveaways and random spin-off models, there have been no less than 14 Lego Millennium Falcons in the last 25 years. That’s more than one every two years — few other sets have been recreated so many times. We’ve no doubt that more are still to come, but 2024’s Lego Millennium Falcon, released to celebrate the…

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NASA’s Juno probe captures amazing views of Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io (video)

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The four biggest moons of Jupiter aren’t just blurry smudges in Galileo’s telescope anymore. The Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei discovered Ganymede, Callisto, Europa and Io back in 1610, which explains why they’re called the Galilean moons. We’ve learned a lot about these exotic bodies in the past 400 years thanks to ever-improving telescope views and close-up imagery snapped by voyaging spacecraft like NASA’s Juno Jupiter orbiter. Indeed, Juno recently conducted two close flybys of Io, the most volcanically active body in the solar system, and data from the encounters is…

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NASA’s Artemis 3 astronauts will put a moonquake detector on lunar surface

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The Lunar Environment Monitoring Station (LEMS) is one of the first three potential payloads NASA selected for the Artemis 3 mission, which will land humans on the moon in 2026 for the first time in more than 50 years. The compact, autonomous seismometer is designed to withstand the long, cold lunar night and operate during the day, continuously monitoring ground motion from moonquakes in the region around the lunar south pole, where Artemis 3 astronauts will land. LEMS is expected to operate on the lunar surface for at least three…

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Ingenuity’s travels: New NASA video tracks Mars helicopter’s 72 flights

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NASA’s history-making Ingenuity helicopter covered a lot of ground on Mars over the past three years, as a new video shows. The video, which was released on Thursday (April 18) by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), shows where Ingenuity went on each of its 72 Red Planet sorties, linking each flight line together in an otherworldly Etch a Sketch creation. This work of art throws Ingenuity’s epic achievements into stark relief, showing the tough terrain the 4-pound (1.8 kilograms) chopper negotiated and the impressive distance it traveled — 10.5 miles…

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Rocket Lab gearing up to refly Electron booster for 1st time

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Rocket Lab is taking a big step toward its first-ever rocket reflight. On Jan. 31, one of the company’s Electron rockets launched four private satellites to Earth orbit. The vehicle’s first stage then came back down for a soft ocean splashdown, and Rocket Lab fished it out of the sea and hauled it back to shore for inspection and analysis. The company has recovered boosters in this manner multiple times in the past, gathering information about how to make Electron first stages reusable. But this particular booster will break new…

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‘Transformers One’ 1st trailer unveils Optimus Prime and Megatron’s shared history (video)

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“Transformers One” aims to return the long-running ‘Robots in Disguise’ franchise to its animated roots, and it could be more than meets the eye. After “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” last year, the second chapter in the rebooted live-action Transformers continuity, Paramount and Hasbro are dropping an all-new Cybertronian adventure on us this summer. As far as we know, the animated theatrical feature won’t be directly connected to the live-action movies, whose next step will be a huge Transformers & G.I. Joe crossover designed to please the diehard fans that…

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China rolls out rocket for next astronaut mission to Tiangong space station (photos)

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China is all set to send its next crew to its Tiangong space station. The Shenzhou 18 spacecraft currently sits atop a Long March 2F rocket, on its pad at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. The rocket was transferred 0.93 miles (1.5 kilometers) by rail from the vertical integration building to the pad on April 17, according to China’s human spaceflight agency (CMSA). CMSA said Shenzhou 18 will be launched at an appropriate time in the near future. However, airspace closure notices indicate the launch to the Tiangong Space Station is…

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Sweden becomes 38th country to sign NASA’s Artemis Accords for moon exploration

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Another one signs the (moon) dust. Sweden is the newest nation to sign onto NASA’s Artemis Accords for peaceful and responsible exploration. During a signing event in Stockholm on Tuesday (April 16), Swedish Minister for Education Mats Persson penned the agreement alongside U.S. Ambassador Erik D. Ramanathan. “By joining the Artemis Accords, Sweden strengthens its strategic space partnership with the U.S. on space covering areas such as Swedish space research and the space industry, which in turn also strengthens Sweden’s total defense capability,” Persson said in a NASA statement. Related:…

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Ingenuity team says goodbye to pioneering Mars helicopter

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Saying goodbye is never easy, especially from a world away.  The Ingenuity Mars helicopter team convened one last time on Tuesday (April 16) to oversee a transmission from the little rotorcraft, the first robot ever to explore the skies of a world beyond Earth. The meeting, in a control room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, came nearly three months after Ingenuity’s 72nd and final flight. The 4-pound (1.8 kilograms) chopper damaged its rotors while landing that day, consigning it to a stationary existence from now on…

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Boom’s XB-1 test plane gets FAA green light for supersonic flight

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Like Tom Cruise’s “Maverick” character in “Top Gun,” Boom Supersonic is feeling the need for speed. The Colorado company has received a first-of-its-kind approval from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to exceed Mach 1 during test flights of its XB-1 supersonic jet. These flights are slated to occur sometime this year within the Black Mountain Supersonic Corridor in Mojave, California. The sleek, delta-shaped XB-1 took its maiden flight on March 22, 2024 from the Mojave Air & Space Port, and now it’s free to go supersonic at Boom’s California…

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