Category: Solar System

Our solar system

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

NeRD

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…

Read More

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

NeRD

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…

Read More

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

NeRD

“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…

Read More

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

NeRD

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…

Read More

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

NeRD

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:…

Read More

Ingenuity team says goodbye to pioneering Mars helicopter

NeRD

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…

Read More

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

NeRD

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…

Read More

What’s left of the 2024 solar eclipse lives in our hearts

NeRD

For a few moments this year, the sun was a lime green portal for Vicki Stirm. It happened while she was standing among tens of thousands of people on an asphalt racetrack in Indiana, on the same day our moon briefly stopped our star from illuminating our world. The ocean of onlookers around her had been watching a total solar eclipse unfold through paper glasses shaped like what you might’ve gotten as a child before a 3D movie, similarly meant to prime the human eye for a new layer of…

Read More

Uranus and Neptune aren’t made of what we thought, new study hints

NeRD

Astronomers have long believed that the ice giants Uranus and Neptune are rich in frozen water. However, a new study suggests they may also have tons of methane ice. The findings could help solve a puzzle about how these icy worlds formed. Much about Uranus and Neptune remains unknown. These ice giant worlds have had just a single spacecraft visitor, Voyager 2, which flew past them in the 1980s. As a result, scientists have only a hazy idea of the ice giants’ compositions — for example, that they contain significant…

Read More

Exotic ‘Einstein ring’ suggests that mysterious dark matter interacts with itself

NeRD

A fresh analysis of a remarkably massive yet compact galaxy from the early universe suggests that dark matter interacts with itself. The galaxy, JWST-ER1, which formed just 3.4 billion years after the Big Bang, was first spotted last October in images snapped by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). At over 17 billion light-years from Earth, JWST-ER1g is the farthest-ever example of a perfect “Einstein ring” — an unbroken circle of light around the galaxy, a result of light rays from a distant, unseen galaxy being bent due to the…

Read More