India’s lunar lander finds 1st evidence of a moonquake in decades

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India’s moon rover may have just detected the first evidence of a “moonquake” since the 1970s. The Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity (ILSA) attached to the Vikram lander detected the seismic activity on the surface of the moon Aug. 26. Vikram landed on the moon’s south pole Aug. 23 as part of the Chandrayaan-3 mission — India’s first mission to the lunar surface. If it’s confirmed, the moonquake — which the mission detected alongside other activity including the movements of India’s Pragyan rover — could give scientists a rare insight…

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Hurricane Lee looks absolutely terrifying in this footage from inside its eye (video)

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Storm chasers caught terrifying footage from inside the eye of Hurricane Lee on Friday (Sept. 8). The footage of the hurricane shows lightning crackling throughout the storm as its jet-black eye looms ominously overhead. The video was shot by the U.S. Air Force Reserve’s 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron in Biloxi, Mississippi, known as the “Hurricane Hunters.” The video was published by the U.S. Department of Defense on Friday (song “Broken Glass” by Logan Spaleta added by Space.com). Hurricane Lee is currently a Category 4 storm, meaning it features sustained winds…

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Ultra-powerful space explosion, 1st of its kind, may have been triggered by black hole star-destroyer

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An example of an entirely new type of cosmic explosion that vastly outpowers most supernovas could be the result of a small or medium-sized black hole destroying a star. The explosion, which has been named AT2022aedm, was seen emerging from a red galaxy located around 2 billion light-years from Earth by astronomers using the ATLAS network of robotic telescopes located in Hawaii, Chile, and South Africa. It was quickly recognized as something never seen before. “We’re always on the lookout for things that are a bit weird and different from…

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Opening the Hatch: Crew-6 Splashdown

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Support teams onboard the SpaceX recovery ship MEGAN work to open the hatch of the SpaceX Dragon Endeavour spacecraft shortly after it landed in the Atlantic Ocean on Sept. 4, 2023, with NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, United Arab Emirates (UAE) astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev aboard.

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SpaceX’s Starship rocket spotted from space ahead of key test flight (satellite photo)

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Starship even looks big from space. SpaceX stacked its latest Starship vehicle on Tuesday (Sept. 5), lifting an upper-stage prototype called Ship 25 atop a first stage variant known as Booster 9 on the orbital launch mount at Starbase, the company’s site in South Texas. That same day, Maxar Technologies’ WorldView-1 satellite captured a great photo of the newly stacked rocket, which stands nearly 400 feet (122 meters) tall — and Maxar posted the shot on X (formerly known as Twitter) for all of us to see. Related: Relive SpaceX’s explosive 1st…

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Warp into Star Trek Day 2023 today with new animated ‘very Short Treks’

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This year marks the 50th anniversary of the underrated “Star Trek: The Animated Series,” which launched back in 1973 on NBC for just two seasons as a sophisticated Saturday morning cartoon with serious storytelling onboard courtesy of executive producers Gene Roddenberry and “The Original Series” writer D.C. Fontana. To fortify CBS Studios and Paramount’s official “Star Trek” Day 2023 celebrations on Friday, Sept. 8, “Trek” fans will have one more reason to cheer as the studio honors “50 Years of Star Trek Animation” with newly-minted “Star Trek: very Short Treks.”…

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Virgin Galactic will launch some of its 1st space tourist customers on ‘Galactic 03’ flight Friday. But who’s flying?

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Virgin Galactic plans to launch its third commercial spaceflight on Friday (Sept. 8), but you won’t be able to watch the action live. The company is targeting Friday morning for the liftoff of the Galactic 03 mission, which will send three paying customers aloft from Spaceport America in New Mexico.  Liftoff will occur around the same as Virgin Galactic‘s previous missions, company officials told Space.com via email — so, about 10:30 a.m. EDT (1430 GMT). But Galactic 03 won’t be livestreamed; we’ll have to rely on updates that Virgin Galactic…

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