Category: The Moon

Our moon

What time is SpaceX’s Starship Flight 6 launch test on Nov. 19?

NeRD

SpaceX is gearing up to launch its next Starship test flight, a mission that will attempt a second catch of the world’s largest rocket on Tuesday (Nov. 19). But if you’re hoping to watch the launch live online, you’ll need to know when to tune in. Currently, SpaceX’s Starship Flight 6 test flight is scheduled to launch no earlier than Tuesday, Nov. 19, at 5 p.m. EST (2100 GMT) from the company’s Starbase site in South Texas, near Boca Chica Beach. This will be SpaceX’s sixth test flight of a…

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Watch November full moon rise today in free livestream

NeRD

The Beaver Supermoon 2024: online observation (15 Nov. 2024) – YouTube Watch On The November Full Moon, also known as the Beaver Moon rises today and is the last supermoon of the year. You can watch the full moon rise live from Italy, in a free livestream courtesy of astronomer Gianluca Masi of the Virtual Telescope Project. The November full moon livestream starts at 1:30 p.m. EST (1830 GMT) and you can watch it live here on Space.com or directly on the Virtual Telescope Project’s WebTV or YouTube channel, weather…

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Aurora activity is just getting started. Here’s why the best northern lights are yet to come.

NeRD

There’s no doubt we’ve been treated to some remarkable aurora shows this year (the May superstorms and the recent strong activity in October spring to mind) but what if I told you this was only the beginning of some incredible northern lights activity? In October 2024, scientists announced that the sun has reached solar maximum, a period of heightened solar activity and sunspot frequency that occurs during the sun‘s approximately 11-year solar cycle. During the solar maximum period, the sun emits more energized particles as it erupts with coronal mass…

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Did NASA’s Viking landers accidentally kill life on Mars? Why one scientist thinks so

NeRD

In 1975, NASA’s Viking 1 spacecraft entered orbit around Mars, carrying a mission to unlock the secrets of the Red Planet. Soon, it released twin landers that drifted toward the Martian surface and eventually made history as the first American spacecraft to touch down on the world. For over six years, Viking 1 continued to orbit Mars’ Chryse Planitia region while its landers collected soil samples using robotic arms and onboard laboratories, marking a groundbreaking chapter in humanity’s exploration of the Martian environment. At the time, however, little was known…

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Blue Origin stacks huge New Glenn rocket ahead of 1st launch (photo)

NeRD

Blue Origin’s massive new rocket is getting closer to being ready to fly. The company shared a new photo of the two stages of its New Glenn rocket being joined together for the first time in the company’s facility near NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. “GS-1 meets GS-2,” the company wrote on X (formerly Twitter) in a post accompanying the photo, in reference to the first (GS-1) and second (GS-2) stages of the new rocket. New Glenn is expected to make its maiden flight sometime in November, taking…

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Could a supernova ever destroy Earth?

NeRD

When the bright star Betelgeuse explodes, it will be an impressive sight. The stellar explosion, known as a supernova, will be brighter than any planet and almost as bright as the full moon. It will be visible during the day, and you could read a book to its light at midnight. It will last a few months before fading away, as all supernovas do. But it won’t be dangerous. For that, it would have to be much, much closer; Betelgeuse is roughly 650 light-years away. So are there any stars…

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SpaceX launches 24 Starlink satellites on 2nd leg of spaceflight doubleheader

NeRD

SpaceX launched 24 of its Starlink internet satellites from Florida early this morning (Nov. 14) in the second half of a spaceflight doubleheader. A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the 24 Starlink spacecraft lifted off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station today at 8:21 a.m. EST (1321 GMT.) The four-hour launch window opened at 5:33 a.m. EST (0933 GMT) just five hours after another Falcon 9 launched 20 Starlink satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The Falcon 9’s first stage returned to Earth about eight minutes after liftoff…

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NASA dealing with aging ISS and spacewalk hardware: ‘None of our spacesuits are spring chickens’

NeRD

The commander of SpaceX’s Crew-8 astronaut mission says that NASA continues to prioritize safety while co-managing an aging space station. The International Space Station (ISS) and the spacesuit that spacewalking NASA astronauts wear, known as the extravehicular mobility unit (EMU), are both decades old. And it’s the age of this hardware that has led to issues with both recently, NASA astronaut and Crew-8 commander Matthew Dominick told reporters on Friday (Nov. 8). “None of our spacesuits are spring chickens, as we would say, and so we will expect to see…

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Trump appoints SpaceX’s Elon Musk to help head regulation-slashing ‘Department of Government Efficiency’

NeRD

Elon Musk will have a place in the second Trump administration. The SpaceX founder and CEO will lead the new “Department of Government Efficiency” along with entrepreneur and politician Vivek Ramaswamy, President-elect Donald Trump announced on Tuesday evening (Nov. 12). “Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure Federal Agencies — Essential to the Save America Movement,” Trump wrote in a statement on Tuesday (capitalization his). “It will become, potentially, ‘The Manhattan Project’ of…

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NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab laying off 5% of its workforce

NeRD

NASA’s chief center for robotic planetary exploration is conducting another round of layoffs. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California — which manages many of NASA’s high-profile robotic missions, such as the Perseverance and Curiosity Mars rovers — announced Tuesday (Nov. 12) that it will lay off about 325 employees, or roughly 5% of its workforce. “The impacts are occurring across technical, business and support areas of the Laboratory,” JPL officials wrote in an update on Tuesday. “These are painful but necessary adjustments that will enable us to adhere…

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