Category: The Moon

Our moon

How to watch SpaceX’s Crew-9 astronaut launch for NASA on Sept. 28

NeRD

SpaceX plans to launch the Crew-9 astronaut mission for NASA on Saturday (Sept. 28), and you can watch the action live online. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Crew Dragon spacecraft and its crew is scheduled to lift off from Space Launch Complex-40 at Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Saturday at 1:17 p.m. EDT (1717 GMT). You can watch the liftoff — the first crewed launch ever from SLC-40 — live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA. Crew-9, the ninth crew rotation mission for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program,…

Read More

This exoplanet circling a dead star may mirror Earth’s fate — if our planet survives a dying sun, that is

NeRD

A planetary system anchored by a dead white dwarf star, located around 4,000 light-years away, has offered astronomers a possible glimpse into what our sun and Earth could look like in around 8 billion years.  However, this would only be Earth’s future if our planet manages to survive the sun’s eventual transformation into a swollen red giant. This transformation is expected to happen around 5 billion to 6 billion years from now, when the sun finally exhausts its fuel supply needed for nuclear fusion. That red giant phase will see…

Read More

‘That’s weird’: James Webb Space Telescope spies a strange galaxy outshining its stars

NeRD

In a pocket of the universe teeming with galaxies, the James Webb Space Telescope has zeroed in on one blazing so brightly it outshines its stars. The James Webb Space Telescope has spotted the galaxy named GS-NDG-9422 — a realm that existed about one billion years after the Big Bang, and indeed one that may provide the missing link of galaxy evolution between the universe’s first stars and well-structured galaxies. GS-NDG-9422 “will help us understand how the cosmic story began,” Alex Cameron, an observational astronomer at the University of Oxford…

Read More

Radar images capture snowman-shaped object tumbling past Earth

NeRD

The universe appears to have sent us an early Christmas present: the large asteroid that tumbled safely past Earth last week was, in fact, two asteroids melded into one object that resembles a snowman. The asteroid, named 2024 ON, zipped past Earth on Sept. 17 at 19,842 mph (31,933 kph), which is roughly 26 times the speed of sound. The space rock is huge — 1150 feet (350 meters) long, about the size of a skyscraper — but it safely floated past Earth at a distance of 620,000 miles (1…

Read More

Japan launching spy satellite on penultimate mission of H-2A rocket early Sept. 26

NeRD

Japan’s workhorse H-2A rocket is set to fly for the second-to-last time early Thursday morning (Sept. 26). An H-2A topped with a secret spy satellite called IGS-Radar 8 is scheduled to lift off from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center on Thursday at 1:24 a.m. EDT (0524 GMT and 2:24 p.m. local Japan time). Space.com will provide a webcast of the launch, if one is made available. According to NextSpaceflight.com, IGS-Radar 8 will head to sun-synchronous orbit (SSO), a polar path in which satellites cruise over patches of Earth at the same local…

Read More

Canon PowerShot Zoom digital monocular review

NeRD

The Canon PowerShot Zoom is a bit confusing at first. Most of its features as a camera are equally well matched by your average phone and undoubtedly surpassed with almost any modern digital camera. You realize the camera’s point only once you start using the 400mm zoom. Canon calls the PowerShot a monocular, but we find it’s better understood as a really small digital camera with the addition of a two-position zoom lens. This feature makes it a unique take on the monocular market. The lens is 100/400mm (equivalent) with…

Read More

SpaceX launching 20 Starlink internet satellites to orbit early Sept. 25

NeRD

SpaceX plans to launch 20 more of its Starlink broadband satellites, including 13 with direct-to-cell capability, from California early Wednesday morning (Sept. 25). A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 20 Starlink spacecraft is scheduled to lift off from Vandenberg Space Force Base, on California’s central coast, Wednesday at 3:01 a.m. EDT (0701 GMT; 9:01 p.m. on Sept. 24 California time). You can watch the action live via SpaceX’s X account; coverage will begin about five minutes before launch. If all goes according to plan, the Falcon 9’s first stage will come…

Read More

‘We are close:’ SETI astrobiologist Nathalie Cabrol on the search for life

NeRD

A leading astrobiologist melds her passion with the weighty nature of trying to grasp for answers to two key questions: Are we alone in the universe? How did life on Earth begin in the first place? Nathalie Cabrol’s book, “The Secret Life of the Universe: An Astrobiologist’s Search for the Origins and Frontiers of Life” (Scribner/Simon & Schuster), released last month, offers an insightful and reflective view of the search for life — a mind-stretching quest not only looking “out there” but also right here on Earth. Perhaps part of…

Read More

Tropical Storm Helene delays SpaceX’s Crew-9 astronaut launch to Sept. 28

NeRD

SpaceX’s next astronaut mission has been delayed by a powerful storm. The company had been planning to launch the Crew-9 mission to the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Thursday afternoon (Sept. 26). However, that target date has slipped by at least two days, thanks to a maelstrom named Helene. Helene is a tropical storm at the moment, but it’s expected to slam into Florida’s Gulf Coast on Thursday as a Category 3 hurricane. Thus, NASA and SpaceX now aim to launch…

Read More

SpaceX fishes Starship Super Heavy booster out of the sea (photo)

NeRD

SpaceX has pulled some pieces of its Starship megarocket from the sea. On Sunday evening (Sept. 22), SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk posted on X a photo of dripping and damaged rocket hardware being lifted out of the ocean. The mangled metal is part of the first-stage booster that flew on the most recent Starship test flight, Musk said. “Like the ruins of a futuristic, long-dead civilization,” he wrote in another post a few hours later. SpaceX is developing Starship to get people and payloads to the moon, Mars…

Read More