Two weeks after casting its shadow across the Americas during an annular solar eclipse, the moon will swing around to skim through the northern edge of the Earth's own shadow on Saturday, Oct. 28. Here's what to expect during the partial lunar eclipse, which will be visible primarily from the Eastern Hemisphere of Earth (but folks across the US, North America and elsewhere can watch it online!).
Testing is now underway on NASA's Dragonfly rotorcraft, a nuclear-powered, car-sized aerial drone that will look for potential precursors to life on Saturn's moon, Titan. But before Dragonfly can take to the sky, NASA has to make sure it can withstand the moon's unique environment.
The mobile launcher for a big moon mission got all wet in a big test this week. To get ready for Artemis 2, set to carry astronauts around the moon in late 2024, the mobile launcher that will be used to launch the powerful Space Launch System rocket had a "water flow test." It was the third in an ongoing series at NASA's Kennedy Space Center to "verify the overpressure protection and sound suppression system is ready for launch," NASA officials said.
The three spaceflyers of the Shenzhou 17 mission reached China's Tiangong space station early Thursday morning, just 6.5 hours or so after lifting off atop a Long March 2F rocket from the Gobi Desert. The Shenzhou 17 crew consists of mission commander Tang Hongbo, 48, and former fighter pilots Tang Shengjie, 34, and Jiang Xinlin, 35. They're the youngest group ever to visit Tiangong, which China began assembling in low Earth orbit in April 2021 and finished about 18 months later. "Build a dream at the Tiangong space station and continue to work hard," they said in unison in China's CCTV news video.
Earth's premier gravitational wave detector just received a major upgrade that will significantly improve its ability to spot ripples in the fabric of space and time - undulations created by collisions between black holes or neutron stars, and sometimes, between both. "We can now reach the deeper universe and are expecting to detect about 60 percent more mergers than before," scientists say.
Early next month, SpaceX will send a clutch of science experiments to the International Space Station investigating a range of topics, from high-speed laser communications to rolling atmospheric waves on Earth. Called ILLUMA-T, the laser aims to boost ISS communications while assisting future missions in deep space.
It was only a matter of time before the James Webb Space Telescope's vibrant repertoire of images and impressive backstory were turned into film, and director Nathaniel Kahn's enchanting "Deep Sky" is exactly that. "There is this kind of power the images have. It really isn't from us. We're creating the context in which you can appreciate them, but we're not forcing it," its director Nathaniel Kahn says.
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