Category: Space Stations

Space stations in orbit or planned

US Space Force broke its launch record in 2024 with 93 liftoffs

NeRD

An impressive 93 United States Space Force launches lifted off from Florida’s coast in 2024, setting a new Space Force record for the second year in a row. Space Launch Delta 45 (SLD 45), headquartered at Patrick Space Force Base in Florida, is a unit of the United States Space Force responsible for managing space launch operations on the East Coast, including launches from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Last year, SLD 45 — the world’s busiest spaceport in 2024 — saw a record-breaking 93…

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BluShift Aerospace hopes to launch 1st suborbital rocket from Maine in 2025

NeRD

After a successful engine burn test in October, Maine-based bluShift Aerospace is planning for its next big milestone: a suborbital flight test toward the end of 2025. The rocket company, located at Brunswick Landing in southern Maine, was founded over a decade ago. In January of 2021, the company carved its niche in space history when it became the first to commercially use non-toxic biofuel to power its inaugural rocket prototype, Stardust 1.0, on a successful test launch. According to bluShift CEO and founder Sascha Deri, the rocket’s “secret sauce”…

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This Week In Space podcast: Episode 142 —2025 in Space

NeRD

2025 in Space – The Year’s Most Anticipated Space Missions & Developments – YouTube Watch On On Episode 142 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik talk about 2025 in space! It’s going to be an exciting year, kicking off with the first launch attempt for Blue Origin’s New Glenn heavy booster and another test flight of Starship. Then we’ll see a new asteroid sampling mission from China, the first test flight of Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander to the moon, and the launch of the first-ever…

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‘Silo’ Season 2, ‘The Book of Quinn’: Juliette suffers, Walker snitches, and Lukas decodes Quinn’s letter

NeRD

You can feel it in the air, not just the advent of the fresh new year, but the narrative momentum building towards a turbulent climax in Apple TV+’s “Silo” Season 2 as we entered this eighth episode Friday night titled, “The Book of Quinn.” Last week’s chapter called “The Dive” found Juliette resurfacing from successfully starting the ground water pump to find Solo missing and a trail of blood and hatchet providing ominous clues to his disappearance. Lukas Kyle is inching closer to decoding Salvador Quinn’s secret letter, while Bernard…

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Peter Parker battles a rogue alien hunter in Marvel’s ‘Predator vs. Spider-Man’

NeRD

Since Disney acquired 20th Century Fox and its vault of valuable intellectual property back in 2019, the House of Mouse has been slowly tapping into its fresh stable of Fox film franchises to create mashups and crossovers with its more popular Marvel Comics characters and so far the results are electrifying. That dreadlocked interstellar hunter known as the Predator has already infiltrated two Marvel miniseries courtesy of veteran writer Benjamin Percy, with 2023’s “Predator vs. Wolverine” and 2024’s “Predator vs. Black Panther.” Now Percy is back to pounce on a…

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Small satellite constellation could reveal black holes like never before

NeRD

Researchers in South Korea are developing a constellation of satellites that could reveal what goes on in the vicinity of supermassive black holes like never before. The constellation, dubbed Capella, is a brainchild of Seoul National University astronomy professor Sascha Trippe. An expert in black holes, Trippe has grown frustrated with the limitations of humanity’s existing instruments for observing black holes and concerned that unless major technological advances are made, research may soon reach a “dead end.” When the first-ever image of a supermassive black hole — the one at…

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NASA will announce update to Mars sample return plans on Jan. 7. Here’s how to listen in

NeRD

The year 2025 isn’t even a week old and NASA is already gearing up for its first big announcement, this one about the agency’s ambitious, yet beleaguered, Mars sample return mission. On Tuesday (Jan. 7), NASA’s top brass will hold an audio-only press conference to update the public on its Mars sample return program. The media briefing will begin at 1:00 p.m. EST (1800 GMT), and you’ll be able to listen in online via NASA’s website. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and Nicky Fox, the agency’s associate administrator for science missions,…

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What I learned from a black hole in Los Angeles

NeRD

On York Boulevard in Los Angeles, a blurred black hole hangs on a dark wall, joined only by a pair of headphones playing looping echoes of its siblings colliding. It’s a familiar scene of our galaxy’s supermassive central void, and certainly one that has flown far and wide over the years. I’d bet you’ve seen it. Journalists (including myself) have fawned over this image, affixing it to exhilarating news stories under titles like “First Image of Milky Way’s Black Hole” or “Center of Our Galaxy Revealed.” Universities have thrown it…

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Sun erupts with powerful X1.2 solar flare, causes radio blackouts (photo)

NeRD

The sun started 2025 with a bang as it fired off a powerful solar flare this morning. The X-class solar flare peaked at an X.12 at 6:40 a.m. EST (1140 GMT) on Friday (Jan. 3), releasing a blast of energy from a sunspot region known as AR 3947 and triggering a radio blackout event for parts of the Southern Atlantic, Africa and parts of eastern South America. When these blackouts happen, they can result in a full or partial loss of high frequency (HF) radio signals in regions that are…

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How to watch SpaceX launch its 1st Falcon 9 rocket of 2025 tonight

NeRD

SpaceX will launch its first Falcon 9 rocket of 2025 today, if all goes according to plan. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is set to take off on Friday (Jan. 3) at 8:27 p.m. EST (0127 GMT) from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The flight will launch the Thuraya 4 spacecraft to geosynchronous orbit on behalf of Space42, a satellite and space services company based in the United Arab Emirates. The satellite will provide mobile communications services throughout Europe, the Middle East and…

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