SpaceX's Crew-3 astronaut launch for NASA delayed by 'minor medical issue' | Amazon to launch 1st prototype internet satellites for Kuiper constellation in 2022 | Space station astronauts eat tacos with space-grown chile peppers
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SpaceX's next astronaut launch for NASA has been delayed until at least Saturday (Nov. 6) by a "minor medical issue" affecting a crewmember, agency officials said. The mission, known as Crew-3, had been scheduled to lift off early Wednesday morning (Nov. 3) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. The earliest it could now launch is 11:36 p.m. EDT on Saturday, Nov. 6 (0336 GMT on Nov. 7).
Amazon aims to launch the first two prototype satellites for its huge Project Kuiper broadband constellation in 2022. The two spacecraft, known as KuiperSat-1 and KuiperSat-2, will lift off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station by the fourth quarter of next year, if all goes according to plan, the company announced today (Nov. 1). The duo will test key technology for Project Kuiper, a constellation in low Earth orbit (LEO) that Amazon envisions consisting of more than 3,200 satellites eventually.
Some of humanity's first space-grown chile peppers have been consumed in orbit, taco-style. NASA astronaut Megan McArthur, one of the seven crewmembers currently living and working at the International Space Station, created what she called "my best space tacos yet," using some of the newly harvested peppers, some fajita beef and rehydrated tomatoes.
(NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/NASA/ESA/M.H. Wong and I. de Pater et al.)
A NASA spacecraft is giving the best-ever 3D model of the largest planet of our solar system. The Juno mission is using its second extended phase to peer far into the clouds of Jupiter, using a polar-orbiting view that no previous spacecraft was able to access. The results in the early phase of the extension — which started this year and will go to 2025, if the spacecraft outlasts the intense radiation — have been rich so far, investigators said in a news conference Thursday (Oct. 28).
The United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) has kicked off in the Scottish city of Glasgow, welcoming world leaders, experts and activists who will look for ways to slow down climate change. During two weeks of discussions and negotiations, the participating countries will try to agree on a more aggressive stance to cutting greenhouse gas emissions in order for the world to have a chance to meet the global warming targets set out at the COP21 climate change conference in Paris in 2015.
Is there intelligent life elsewhere in the universe? It’s a question that has been debated for centuries, if not millennia. But it is only recently that we’ve had an actual chance of finding out, with initiatives such as SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) using radio telescopes to actively listen for radio messages from alien civilizations. What should we expect to detect if these searches succeed? My suspicion is that it is very unlikely to be little green men – something I speculated about at a talk at a Breakthrough Listen (a SETI project) conference.
A huge solar flare from the sun has spawned an eerie green glow over some parts of Earth in a Halloween northern lights show that has stargazers over the moon. A powerful X1 solar flare from the sun on Thursday (Oct. 28) unleashed a wave of charged particles that reached Earth last night just ahead of Halloween (Oct. 31). It spawned what scientists call a G3-class geomagnetic storm in the Earth's upper atmosphere, and could make the northern lights (auroras typically seen around the Earth's north pole) visible at latitudes much lower than normal.
A new NASA video from a spacecraft watching the sun has captured spectacular views of solar flares erupting from the star this week just ahead of Halloween. The video, taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Orbiter, shows mesmerizing close-up views of solar flares blasting off the sun between Monday and Thursday (Oct. 25-28), ending with a major X1-class solar storm. "Brighter than a shimmering ghost, faster than the flick of a black cat's tail, the suncast a spell in our direction, just in time for Halloween," NASA officials wrote in a video description.
