Watch SpaceX attempt a record 11th flight of a Falcon 9 rocket with Starlink launch early Saturday | See the bright Comet Leonard near Venus in the night sky tonight! | Mars helicopter Ingenuity aces 18th Red Planet flight (video)
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SpaceX will launch its second stack of Starlink satellites from the West Coast early Saturday morning (Dec. 18), and you can watch the action live online. The private spaceflight company will launch a stack of 52 Starlink satellites on one of its previously flown Falcon 9 rockets. The mission is set to blast off at 4:24 a.m. EST (0924 GMT, 01:24 a.m. local time) from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Station in California.
Skywatchers will be treated to a cosmic duet tonight (Dec. 17), as the brightest comet of 2021 and the brightest planet pair up for a night sky double feature. Comet Leonard, also known as C/2021 A1, will be visible from the Northern Hemisphere as it passes near the planet Venus — sometimes referred to as the "evening star." The comet can be seen shortly after the sun goes down in the southwest sky, very low above the horizon.
NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity has soared through alien skies yet again. "The #MarsHelicopter keeps going, going, going! Ingenuity successfully completed its 18th flight, adding 124.3 seconds to its overall time aloft on the Red Planet," officials with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, which manages Ingenuity's pioneering mission, said via Twitter today (Dec. 17). Ingenuity covered 754 feet (230 meters) of ground while cruising at 5.6 mph (9.0 kph) during the flight, which took place on Wednesday (Dec. 15), JPL officials added.
Laura Shepard Churchley is not sure if she is now an astronaut. The eldest daughter of Alan Shepard, America's first astronaut to fly into space, Churchley followed in her father's footsteps — and trajectory — lifting off on Dec. 11 aboard the New Shepard, Blue Origin's suborbital launch vehicle named after her dad. The 10-minute flight established Churchley as the 605th person (and 372nd American) to soar above Earth, but she did so without needing the months- or years-long preparation her father and his fellow astronauts had to undergo.
Pluto is geologically alive. Bizarre geometric shapes first spotted on the dwarf planet's surface in 2015 are indications that a process called sublimation is ongoing, a new study suggests. A fresh model indicates that the polygonal nitrogen ice on Pluto — spotted by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft during a flyby — froze directly from vapor, rather than passing through a liquid state in between.
The nature and origin of black holes and their role in the evolution of the universe still puzzles scientists. Now, a new study suggests that the existence of black holes from the earliest moments of the universe could explain more than one astronomical mystery.
December's Cold Moon, the longest full moon of the year, will debut this Saturday night (Dec. 18), making it the last full moon before the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. To catch the Cold Moon at its fullest, look up at 11:36 p.m. EST (0432 GMT on Dec. 19). If you miss that moment, you'll still get a chance to see the lunar show; although the moon isn't officially full until Saturday, it will appear full for three days, from Friday evening (Dec. 17) through Monday morning (Dec. 20), making this "a full moon weekend," according to NASA.
Comet Leonard spent the first couple of weeks of December visible as a target for observers with binoculars and telescopes in the early morning sky before sunrise. Now, however, the viewing venue has changed and the newfound Comet Leonard (cataloged as C/2021 A1) has moved into the evening sky, visible low above the southwestern horizon about an hour or so after sunset. And tonight (Dec. 17), you can use one the sky's brightest beacons to locate it:Venus.
Google is celebrating the 315th birthday of Émilie du Châtelet, who was a physicist, translator, philosopher despite the exclusion of women from physics at the time. Du Châtelet's most influential book was her anonymously published 1740 text, "The Foundations of Physics," which built on Isaac Newton's work. She also completed a translation of his "Principia," in which Newton outlines the laws of gravity and motion, shortly before her death in 1749; in her version, she not only translated Newton's text into French but also expanded on the math he provided.
