NASA moves up return date for Boeing Starliner astronauts | Space Quiz! What is the term for a planet passing in front of its parent star? | Alarming edits to biography of astronomer Vera Rubin amid
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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. Two members of Crew-9 especially, NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, will likely view Crew-10's arrival as a welcome milestone in their long spaceflight journey. They've been in space since last June, when their 10-day mission got extended to nearly 10 months.
Astronomers are expressing disappointment and alarm as the federally-funded Rubin Observatory altered the biography of renowned astronomer Vera Rubin, for whom the facility is named, on its website. The amended version curtails her legacy of championing women in science and removes all mentions of the observatory's efforts to reduce barriers for women and other historically underrepresented groups in the field.
The great solar storm of May 2024, which sparked beautiful auroral displays over much of the world, also created two new radiation belts that were observed with a satellite that came back from the dead. "This is really stunning," Xinlin Li, a professor at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder, said in a statement. "When we compared the data from before and after the storm, I said, 'Wow, this is something really new'."
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.
Scientists have discovered a new way to probe the interiors of neutron stars by using gravitational waves to turn them into "cosmic tuning forks." The reverberations of such ripples in spacetime could reveal the interiors of these extreme stellar remains.
A SpaceX rocket launched a new batch of Starlink satellites into orbit on Tuesday (Feb. 11) as the spaceflight company's space-based internet service begins direct-to-cell service with T-Mobile. Tuesday's launch came less than 24 hours after another SpaceX Starlink satellite fleet launch on Monday evening (this time from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base), as the company continues to build a massive internet satellite constellation in low Earth orbit. On Sunday, SpaceX partner T-Mobile announced its Starlink-based phone internet service was now live in a beta test mode, with paid service to begin in July.
On Feb. 12, 2001, NASA landed a spacecraft on an asteroid! After a five-year mission, the NEAR-Shoemaker spacecraft touched down on the near-Earth asteroid 433 Eros. This was the first soft landing on an asteroid, and it was supposed to be the last thing NEAR-Shoemaker ever did. But NASA was surprised to find that the spacecraft was still intact and totally fine after hitting the asteroid. Instead of ending the mission as planned, NASA spent a couple more weeks studying Eros from up close. Throughout its mission, it studied things like the asteroid's composition and magnetic field, but it also took the first close-up asteroid pictures ever taken by a spacecraft in orbit.
