Category: The Moon

Our moon

When space meets sea, Crew-9 Dragon meets dolphins: Space photo of the day

NeRD

A pod of bottlenose dolphins circled and surfaced nearby SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Freedom after it splashed down off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida on Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (Image credit: NASA/Keegan Barber) As it turns out, more than humans were interested in the return of SpaceX’s Crew-9 astronauts after an extended mission on board the International Space Station. An unexpected welcome committee arrived soon after the Crew Dragon “Freedom” splashed down on Tuesday, March 18. What is it? SpaceX support team members work around and on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft…

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SpaceX to set new rocket-reuse record on March 21 launch of US spy satellites

NeRD

SpaceX will set a new rocket-reuse record early Friday morning (March 21), if all goes according to plan. A Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to lift off from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base Friday at 2:49 a.m. EDT (0649 GMT; 11:49 p.m. on March 20 local California time), on the NROL-57 mission for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). This rocket’s first stage also lofted the SPHEREx space telescope and PUNCH solar probes for NASA on March 11, according to a SpaceX mission description. An on-time liftoff for NROL-57 would…

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Aliens abduct space-crazed kid in wild new trailer for Pixar’s ‘Elio’ (video)

NeRD

After making a course correction with a number of reshoots and directorial shuffling, “Elio” is poised to be Disney & Pixar’s next potential blockbuster when the kid-centric sci-fi comedy drops into our galaxy with a rescheduled release date of June 20, 2025 and we’ve got a vibrant new trailer to share. “Elio’s” family-friendly plotline orbits around its aliens-obsessed 11-year-old hero who dreams of venturing into the heavens on intergalactic adventures when he’s suddenly beamed up into the midst of the “Communiverse.” This vast interplanetary institution is a consortium of representatives…

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The MacBook Pro is one of the best laptops for astronomers and it’s just hit its lowest-ever price

NeRD

The MacBook Pro is one of the best laptops for astronomers, delivering processing power, portability, and incredible display quality. For professional and amateur stargazers it’s an invaluable asset offering some of the best-in-class image processing, data analysis, and telescope control. Save $200 and buy the Apple MacBook Pro 14-inch for just $1,399 at Amazon. Regardless of the model, the MacBook Pro is always in demand but it comes with a hefty price tag. If you’re looking to upgrade your current laptop or a Mac is on your wishlist, then this…

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Alien life could survive on Earth-like planets circling dead stars, study suggests

NeRD

White dwarfs may be stellar corpses, but that doesn’t mean that everything around them has to be lifeless. That’s the conclusion of Florida Institute of Technology researcher Caldon Whyte, who’s particularly fascinated by these stellar remnants. Until now, scientists have generally thought that planets orbiting white dwarfs would be unsuitable for life because the dynamic temperature decrease of their dead parent star makes their atmospheres too unstable. As the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) increasingly investigates white dwarf systems, however, Whyte and colleagues developed a model capable of assessing if…

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SpaceX launches 23 Starlink internet satellites to orbit from Florida’s Space Coast (video, photos)

NeRD

SpaceX launched yet another batch of its Starlink internet satellites to orbit from Florida this afternoon (March 18). A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 23 Starlink craft, including 13 with direct-to-cell capability, lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station today at 3:57 p.m. EDT (1957 GMT). About eight minutes later, the rocket’s first stage touched down on the SpaceX drone ship “A Shortfall of Gravitas,” which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean. It was the 19th launch and landing for this particular booster, according to a company mission description. A…

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Never-‘stuck’ Starliner astronauts return to Earth at last with Crew-9 duo in SpaceX Dragon splashdown

NeRD

The first astronauts to fly on board two different commercial spacecraft during a single mission have returned to Earth, splashing down with two of their International Space Station crewmates. Sunita “Suni” Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore did not set out to make history other than being the first crew to launch on Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner capsule. After their capsule encountered propulsion issues, though, and NASA, out of an abundance of caution, decided to land it without them on board, Williams and Wilmore were reassigned to SpaceX‘s Crew Dragon to complete…

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Watch the sun set over the moon in epic video from private Blue Ghost lunar lander

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Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander made the most of its last few hours of life on the moon. The solar-powered Blue Ghost shut down on Sunday evening (March 16), shortly after the sun set over its lunar locale. The lander watched our star’s descent and disappearance over the cratered horizon, capturing the oncoming, killing darkness in a poignant video that Firefly shared with the world today (March 18). “These are the first high-definition images taken of the sun going down and then going into darkness at the horizon [on…

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Feel the burn with this amazing video of a Varda space capsule’s plunge through Earth’s atmosphere

NeRD

A small space private capsule has captured stunning onboard scenes from its high-velocity atmospheric reentry. Varda Space’s W-2 mission came to a successful and spectacular end on Feb. 27 when the capsule reentered the atmosphere and landed at the Koonibba Test Range in South Australia. The 265-pound (120 kilograms) capsule spent six weeks in space after launching atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as part of the Transporter 12 mission. (Image credit: Varda Space via YouTube) The company has now released a video capturing dramatic images from its final moments…

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World’s largest digital camera to help new Vera Rubin Observatory make a ‘time-lapse record of the universe’ (video)

NeRD

A major milestone with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory has been reached with the installation of the telescope’s enormous LSST Camera — the last optical component required before the last phase of testing can begin. The car-sized Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) Camera that was recently installed on the Vera C. Rubin Observatory is the largest digital camera ever built and will be used to capture detailed images of the southern hemisphere sky over a decade. “The installation of the LSST Camera on the telescope is a triumph of science…

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