On Episode 114 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik talk about the launches of Boeing’s Starliner and SpaceX’s Starship. Well, we waited, we waffled, and we joked… but Boeing’s Starliner finally made good! Seven or so years after their projected crewed flight date, the second provider of crew delivery to the International Space Station finally succeeded in sending two astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams, to the ISS. Despite a few problems with (sigh) valves, helium tanks, and thrusters, the mission appears to be going swimmingly.…
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Our moon
SpaceX wants to build 1 Starship megarocket a day with new Starfactory
Sure, the test flight of the world’s most powerful rocket this week was nail-biting. But it was also a massive win for SpaceX with a successful fourth test for Starship. The company’s goals for this test flight were accomplished as Starship’s first-stage booster, Super Heavy, made a soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico and the 165-foot tall (50 m) upper stage, referred to simply as Ship, made a controlled landing burn during reentry before landing in the Indian Ocean. SpaceX now aims to build on the progress with its…
Read MoreScientists find slowest spinning ‘radio neutron star’ — it breaks all the dead-star rules
Astronomers have discovered the slowest spinning radio wave-blasting neutron star ever seen; it takes almost an hour to complete a full rotation. That may sound rather fast, but these dead stars are known to spin so rapidly that some experience 700 full turns every second. Even the most leisurely of the about 3,000 radio-emitting neutron stars, or “pulsars,” discovered so far complete a full rotation in a second or so. This ultra-leisurely neutron star, however, designated ASKAP J1935+2148 and located 16,000 light-years from Earth, is emitting radio light at a rate…
Read More‘Sudden, brief, and unexpected:’ dearMoon crew laments cancellation of private SpaceX Starship moon mission
The dearMoon crew has shared their disappointment on social media following the mission’s abrupt cancellation. Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa canceled his planned flight around the moon on June 1 due to delays with SpaceX’s Starship megarocket, which has yet to fly a single crewed test flight. Maezawa initially booked the private trip in 2018 and invited eight artists to join him with the expectation that the project, called dearMoon, would launch by the end of 2023. “I can’t plan my future in this situation, and I feel terrible making the…
Read MoreMassive ‘El Gordo’ galaxy cluster suggests dark matter smashes into itself
Strange behavior in a massive cluster of merging galaxies could be explained if dark matter, the universe’s most mysterious stuff, can collide with itself. However, the most favored model of cosmology right now is the cold dark matter (CDM) model — and it suggests that dark matter, which is effectively invisible because it doesn’t interact with light, is not self-interacting. To get to the bottom of this conundrum, researchers from the Astrophysics and Cosmology group of Italy’s Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA) set about simulating what is happening within…
Read MoreSpaceX Starship launches nail-biting Flight 4 test of the world’s most powerful rocket (video, photos)
The fourth test flight of the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built is in the books, and what a dramatic and nail-biting trip for SpaceX it was. SpaceX launched its Starship megarocket for the fourth time ever today (June 6) at 8:50 a.m. EDT (1250 GMT), sending the 400-foot-tall (122 meters) vehicle aloft from its Starbase site near Boca Chica Beach in South Texas atop a thundering pillar of fire. There were two main goals today: bring Starship’s first-stage booster, known as Super Heavy, down for a soft splashdown…
Read MoreMore people Googled ‘northern lights’ in May 2024 than in any other month in history
The terms ‘northern lights’, ‘space weather‘ and ‘geomagnetic storm’ were googled more in May 2024 than in any other month in the search engine’s history. With April’s total solar eclipse, and Mid-May’s widespread aurora show, public interest in the sun has been much higher than usual. As photos and discussions of the eclipse and northern lights flooded social media and secured segments on prime-time news broadcasts, Google search inquiries for these topics shot up significantly. Using the Google Trends feature, we can utilize Google search statistics to track how public…
Read MoreChang’e 6 mission’s far-side moon samples enter return-to-Earth module in lunar orbit
China’s Chang’e 6 mission continues to make history, having collected the first samples ever retrieved from the far side of the moon and now transferring those samples between spacecraft in orbit. That transfer was necessary for the next step in the samples’ journey — returning to Earth. According to the China National Space Administration (CNSA), the successful rendezvous and docking of the Chang’e 6 ascender and its orbital module took place at 2:48 p.m. Beijing time (2:48 a.m. ET; 0648 GMT) on Thursday (June 6). The safe transfer of the…
Read MoreTerrifying new ‘Alien: Romulus’ trailer unleashes the facehuggers (video)
Following a stunning teaser trailer released back in March, Alien: Romulus is kicking things up a notch with its second trailer, which is full of facehuggers, acid blood and zero-gravity thrills. The Alien movie series has been a fun one to follow over the decades, with the quality going up and down, the mythology being expanded in often contradictory ways, and the fearsome xenomorphs clashing against the extraterrestrials from the Predator franchise outside of comic books and video games. After Ridley Scott’s planned prequel trilogy was denied a conclusion and…
Read MoreSave $400 on Unistellar smart binoculars: Early bird deal
Unistellar’s new smart binoculars, called Envision, are currently $400 off on an early bird sale. That’s a saving of 40% on a pair of binoculars that integrate augmented reality to enhance both nighttime and day-time viewing. Save $400 on the Unistellar Envision smart binoculars on pre-sale from their website. These binoculars work in tandem with their Companion app which helps and enhances the stargazing experience for astronomers, just like when using the eQuinox 2, eVscope 2 and Odyssey smart telescopes. It overlays contextual information in the user’s field of view,…
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