Lockheed Martin tests new hypersonic weapon concept for DARPA | Listen to the 'echoes' of black holes chowing down on stars | SpaceX launches Starlink satellites, lands rocket on record-tying 12th flight
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A Lockheed Martin hypersonic missile prototype flew at five times the speed of sound "for an extended period" during a recent successful technology test for the U.S. military. It was the second test flight for DARPA's Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC) program.
(Aurore Simonnet and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center)
Researchers have detected eight new "echoing" black hole systems in the Milky Way, and they sound like passing through an eerie wind tunnel. And intriguingly, the echoes reveal hints about the role of black holes in galaxy evolution. The gravitational pull of a black hole is so strong that not even light can escape. Black holes are often surrounded by accumulations of superheated gas and dust known as an accretion disk. When a black hole feeds on this material, it produces bursts of bright X-ray light that bounce and echo off the infalling gas.
The two-stage Falcon 9 rocket topped with 53 of SpaceX's Starlink internet satellites lit up the predawn sky above Florida as it lifted off from Pad 39A of NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida Friday at 5:42 a.m. EDT (0942 GMT). The mission marked the 12th launch for this Falcon 9's first stage, tying a company reuse record. SpaceX has flown three different Falcon 9 boosters 12 times so far.
Engineers are preparing to make final tweaks to the instruments on board the James Webb Space Telescope as the observatory readies for operations this summer. NASA said the telescope has "calibrations and characterizations of the instruments using a rich variety of astronomical sources" coming up shortly to make sure everything is working before Webb is set loose to examine the early universe.
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You may have heard that Russian space chief Dmitry Rogozin recently threatened, yet again, to pull his nation out of the International Space Station program. Rogozin's statements need to be viewed through a particular lens: He is angry about the economic sanctions imposed on Russia due to its ongoing invasion of Ukraine and wants them lifted. Here's what you need to know.
Astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn and Kayla Barron, all of NASA, and Matthias Maurer with the European Space Agency splashed down Friday at 12:43 a.m. EDT (0443 GMT). The landing, off the coast of Tampa, Florida, signaled the end of the Crew-3 mission, 176 days after it began.
Boeing's CST-100 Starliner capsule has joined up with its rocket ride. Technicians stacked Starliner atop its United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket Wednesday (May 4) at ULA's Vertical Integration Facility (VIF) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
Virgin Galactic announced on Thursday (May 5) that commercial passenger service will be pushed back a quarter to the first three months of 2023, "due to supply chain and labor constraints." Virgin Galactic's CEO, Michael Colglazier, noted the company is "containing the majority of these issues to minimize impact on schedules" but provided few details in a press release.
NASA and its partners on the project will offer an update on the observatory's current status and next milestones. The news conference will occur on Monday (May 9) at 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT). You can listen to live on Space.com courtesy of the agency or directly through the NASA website.
The hellish planet Venus is known for its incredibly thick atmosphere, crushingly high air pressure and surface temperatures that are hot enough to melt lead. In other words, it has some of the most inhospitable surface conditions in the entire solar system. But going by the standard definition of "habitable zone," Venus sits inside this "Goldilocks" region.
The sample had sat in a freezer for decades at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston but recently made its way to the agency's Goddard Space Flight Facility in Maryland, where researchers have begun to examine it. NASA aims for this work to support future lunar sample studies that take place with its new crewed lunar landing program, known as Artemis.
China's LinkSpace plans to send a rocket into space and land it safely in late 2022, three years after the startup's last major test. The company announced Thursday (May 5) that it had carried out a static fire test of its Reusable Launch Vehicle T6 (RLV-T6) rocket using new methane-fueled engines at a site in Jiangyin, Jiangsu Province.
Astroscale, which plans to provide space cleanup services commercially as early as 2024, said in a statement that the demonstration, part of the End-of-Life Services by Astroscale-demonstration (ELSA-d) mission, was a success despite the last-minute hitch. The experiment, by Japanese company Astroscale, however, stopped short of catching the target as engineers detected "anomalous spacecraft conditions."
Scientists at Nanjing University believe they can use compounds found in lunar soil to locally produce oxygen and fuel to support crewed moon missions. The team analyzed lunar samples collected by China's Chang'e 5 spacecraft in late 2020 and found that iron-rich and titanium-rich substances present in the moon material could act as a catalyst in a process using sunlight and carbon dioxide.