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

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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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Mount Everest from Space

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This view from space shuttle Columbia shows Mount Everest, which reaches 29,028 feet in elevation (8,848 meters), along with many glaciers. Mount Everest is to the left of the V-shaped valley. NASA Crew aboard space shuttle Columbia captured this image of Mount Everest on Nov. 30, 1996, during the STS-80 mission. STS-80, the final shuttle flight of 1996, was highlighted by the successful deployment, operation, and retrieval of two free-flying research spacecraft. See more photos from this mission. Image credit: NASA

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

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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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NASA Awards Launch Service Task Order for Pandora Mission

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Credit: NASA NASA has selected SpaceX of Starbase, Texas, to provide the launch service for the agency’s Pandora mission, which will study at least 20 known exoplanets and their host stars to find out how changes in stars affect our observations of exoplanet atmospheres. The selection is part of NASA’s Venture-Class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare (VADR) launch services contract. This contract allows the agency to make fixed-price indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity awards during VADR’s five-year ordering period, with a maximum total value of $300 million across all contracts. During its one-year primary…

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Station Science Top News: Feb. 7, 2025

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Measuring water loss from space This study showed that the International Space Station’s ECOSTRESS instrument estimates of evapotranspiration (transfer of water to the atmosphere from Earth’s surface and plants) are comparable to ground-based reference values. This finding suggests space measurements could provide guidance for improved water management on large scales. Worsening droughts due to climate change require better water management. Evapotranspiration is a critical part of the hydrologic cycle, but data are lacking on local water conditions and demands. California’s Eastern Municipal Water District uses the ground-based California Irrigation Management…

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

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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

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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

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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

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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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NASA will beam Super Bowl LIX to orbit for astronauts aboard the International Space Station

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Are you ready to catch the big game? On Sunday (Feb. 9), across the United States and around the world, Americans and American football fans will tune in to watch the top two teams in the National Football League (NFL) go head-to-head in the ultimate post-season game, and even astronauts living in space will have the chance to watch the action live. Sunday evening, the American Football Conference (AFC) champions, the Kansas City Chiefs, will face off against the National Football Conference (NFC) champions, the Philadelphia Eagles, in Super Bowl…

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