Category: The Moon

Our moon

Win a chance to see a SpaceX rocket launch thanks to Bethesda, creators of ‘Starfield’

NeRD

2023’s ‘Starfield‘ was a fascinating (albeit flawed) game that nailed the feeling of discovery among the stars and the pursuit of science in a fictional future. Now, shortly after the release of its Shattered Space expansion, Xbox and Bethesda are teaming up with Lonestar to celebrate the launch of the long-awaited Freedom mission, and one lucky fan could witness the event at the Kennedy Space Center. The official Bethesda website unveiled the opportunity on Feb. 7, stating that one ‘Starfield’ fan (plus one companion) will get a chance to watch…

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NASA moves up return date for Boeing Starliner astronauts after swapping SpaceX Dragon spacecraft

NeRD

NASA has decided to shuffle around some SpaceX Dragon capsules in order to launch its Crew-10 mission to the International Space Station as soon as possible. The agency is now targeting March 12 for the launch of Crew-10, which will carry three astronauts and a cosmonaut to the International Space Station (ISS). The four crewmembers are scheduled to ride a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to low-Earth orbit, and their seats on that rocket will be aboard the Crew Dragon Endurance capsule, NASA announced Tuesday (Feb. 11). Their arrival to the…

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Best sci-fi comedies of all time

NeRD

Out of this world laughs and galactic giggles ahead in this list of the best sci-fi comedies of all time. One of the most mesmerizing things about the science fiction genre is the sheer scope of ideas that can be dreamt up, and this aspect lends itself perfectly to comedy; with something so out-of-this-world, there’s a real opportunity to make people laugh. There are crazy and bewildering plots spanning generations, from the twisted future of Idiocracy to the bulging-brained alien invasion of Mars Attacks! To put it simply, there’s a…

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NASA picks SpaceX to launch Pandora exoplanet mission

NeRD

A small NASA exoplanet probe now has a ride to Earth orbit. The agency announced on Monday afternoon (Feb. 10) that it has picked SpaceX to launch Pandora, a 716-pound (325-kilogram) satellite designed to help scientists better understand how our understanding of exoplanets‘ atmospheres are affected by changes in their host stars. Pandora will lift off atop a Falcon 9 rocket no earlier than this fall, according to NASA officials. Pandora will head to low Earth orbit. Once there, the satellite will observe at least 20 known transiting exoplanets —…

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Risks with current Artemis 3 moon landing plan ‘may be too high,’ NASA safety group says

NeRD

An annual safety report to NASA has both praise for the agency and also underscores a number of cautionary woes, including the space agency’s undertaking of the Artemis back-to-the-moon with humans campaign. The annual report from the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) has been released. The report observes that NASA has made impressive progress. Challenges remain, however, and are highlighted in this report. Of note, this report points to significant safety observations for both the agency’s Moon to Mars Program and the current International Space Station operations in low-Earth orbit.…

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What was the mysterious space signal scientists discovered in 2024? Here are some possibilities

NeRD

Having launched on January 9, 2024 by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Einstein Probe detected several new events during its commissioning phase. Last October, Yuan Weimin, the spacecraft’s principle investigator, told China Central Television that the X-ray observatory had already discovered around 60 very strong transient celestial objects, close to a thousand potential transients, and nearly 500 stellar flares, along with a gamma-ray burst from the very early universe. One of those detections was EP240408a, an unusual blast that lit up discussions between astronomers. Zhang and his colleagues immediately…

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Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander leaves Earth orbit to head for the moon

NeRD

Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander is now headed for the moon after firing its engines to send it out of Earth orbit. “Blue Ghost successfully performed a Trans Lunar Injection burn to escape Earth’s gravitational pull and begin a 4-day transit to the moon’s orbit,” Firefly stated on social media platform X on Saturday (Feb. 8). The lander launched on the “Ghost Riders in the Sky” mission on Jan. 15 atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket along with the Japanese space exploration firm ispace’s Resilience moon lander. Both spacecraft…

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Auction offers Neil Armstrong’s reply to NASA engineer’s Apollo 11 mission patch ideas

NeRD

Neil Armstrong was appreciative, but as explained in his handwritten letter, it was too late. The Apollo 11 commander and his crewmates had already arrived at a design to represent the first moon landing. Armstrong’s note and the mission patch proposal that inspired it are up for auction in Goldberg Coins & Collectibles’ Feb. 27 public sale in Los Angeles. The emblem art and first moonwalker‘s reply are part of the Clark C. McClelland collection, an archive of astronaut autographs, cscale rocket models and flown memorabilia from the estate of…

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World’s fastest supercomputer ‘El Capitan’ goes online — it will be used to secure the US nuclear stockpile and in other classified research

NeRD

The fastest supercomputer in the world has officially launched at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LNNL) in California. The supercomputer, called “El Capitan,” cost $600 million to build and will handle various sensitive and classified tasks including securing the U.S. stockpile of nuclear weapons in the absence of underground testing, according to LNNL representatives. This was prohibited in 1992. Research will primarily be focused on national security, including material discovery, high-energy-density physics, nuclear data and weapon design, as well as other classified tasks. Construction on the machine began in May…

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NASA and General Atomics test nuclear fuel for future moon and Mars missions

NeRD

The first humans to Mars might someday ride a rocket propelled by a nuclear reactor to their destination. But before that can happen, nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) technologies still have quite a way to go before we could blast astronauts through space on a nuclear rocket. However, earlier this month, General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (GA-EMS), in collaboration with NASA, achieved an important milestone on the road to using NTP rockets. At NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, General Atomics tested a new NTP reactor fuel to find out if…

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