NASA astronauts will spacewalk on Thursday after space debris alert | Arecibo Observatory: A year after telescope's collapse, an icon gets continuing cleanup and a new documentary | Private habitats, not just the International Space Station, may be needed to get astronauts to Mars
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Two NASA astronauts will conduct a spacewalk previously scheduled for Tuesday (Nov. 30) on Thursday (Dec. 2) after the agency evaluated the risks posed by space debris. NASA astronauts Thomas Marshburn and Kayla Barron were due to begin a spacewalk to replace an antenna system early Tuesday morning; the spacewalk was set to formally begin at 7:10 a.m. EST (1210 GMT) when the two crewmembers set their suits to run on battery power. However, six hours before that time, the agency decided to postpone the excursion due to concerns about space junk.
A year after the collapse of an iconic radio telescope tucked away in a natural sinkhole, scientists and Puerto Ricans are still reeling from the loss of a decades-old observatory.
Private space stations may end up being a key stepping stone on humanity's path to Mars. NASA aims to put astronauts on the moon in this decade and on the Red Planet in the 2030s. To help make these ambitious goals a reality, the agency is performing lots of research aboard the International Space Station. But the venerable ISS, which is 23 years old and has hosted rotating astronaut crews continuously since November 2000, may not be around long enough to see this work through, according to a new report by the NASA Office of Inspector General (OIG).
Debris from Russia's anti-satellite missile test last month has forced some SpaceX Starlink internet satellites to dodge in order to avoid in-orbit collisions, the company's CEO Elon Musk said Tuesday (Nov. 30).
It is unusual to see a comet at its best: Most comets are brightest nearest the sun, just when they're most difficult to spot against the sun's glare or hidden below the horizon. Comet C/2021 A1 (Leonard) is, alas, no exception. But it should be visible in small telescopes and binoculars and quite possibly even dimly to the unaided eye in the Northern Hemisphere's pre-dawn sky as it increases in brightness for at part of December, and later in the month perhaps even briefly in the evening sky, just after sunset.
It seems that good things do indeed come to those who wait, and we're super-excited to finally see the third season of "Lost in Space" on our television screens. The show is a reimagining of the pioneering sci-fi series of the same name that aired on black-and-white TV screens across America in 1965. That show came from the imagination of Irwin Allen and showrunner Zack Estrin has reworked this in the same manner Ron D. Moore did to Glen A. Larson's 1978 "Battlestar Galactica." It's been updated, reimagined, regendered, tweaked and fine-tuned and the end result has been one of the best sci-fi shows on TV in recent years.
Will humans ever find themselves at home at Alpha Centauri? With life on Earth facing increasing challenges as humans battle against massive problems like climate change and its ever-worsening consequences, people often wonder if humanity could possibly live on another planet. In the show "Lost in Space," which got a 2018 revival on Netflix after its original iteration in the 1960s, the Space Family Robinson family pursues doing exactly that. The show sees the family journeying out to a planet in Alpha Centauri, the closest solar system to our own. Season 3 of "Lost in Space" premieres today (Dec. 1) on Netflix.
