Tumbling NASA solar sail snaps its 1st selfie (photo)
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It's landing time for Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, but it's coming home alone. Boeing's first crewed Starliner capsule will leave its two astronauts behind on the International Space Station tonight when it undocks and lands (they'll return later on a SpaceX Dragon) at New Mexico's White Sands Space Harbor. And yes, Space Fans, you can watch live. Here's how.
NASA has released the first image of the open solar sail, formally called the Advanced Composite Solar Sail System, and stated that the spacecraft from which the sail was released will continue to send back more footage and data as time goes on. The image itself may seem a little confusing to make heads or tails of, and that's due in part to the fact that the spacecraft has been slowly tumbling in space.
An experimental NASA solar sail can be seen in the night sky as it orbits the Earth. As the Advanced Composite Solar Sail System orbits Earth, it's large surface area means it reflects enough sunlight to be seen from the ground. Under some conditions, the solar sail demonstrator could even appear as bright as Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky. If you want to see it for yourself, you're in luck: NASA has an app for that.
All full moons are impressive sights on their own, but this month's Full Harvest Moon will be especially noteworthy. In addition to being a slightly larger-than-average "supermoon," September's full moon will also experience a partial lunar eclipse when it rises on the evening of Sept. 17.
In the unlikely event a space emergency arises on the space station in the near future, two astronauts will have to ride home without spacesuits. That's because the Boeing spacesuits they wore on Starliner aren't compatible with SpaceX's Dragon capsule, which they're now riding home. Here's why.
China's mysterious space plane has returned to Earth after spending over 8 months in orbit. The reusable spacecraft landed at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in a remote section of northwest China on Friday (Sept. 6). It launched from the same site atop a Long March 2F rocket on Dec. 14, 2023, on its third mission, and spent 268 days in orbit, according to Chinese state media outlet Xinhua.
The BepiColombo Mercury probe made a flyby of its ultimate destination on Wednesday, capturing superb images of the planet's crater-covered crust. The gravity assist maneuver is part of what will be the probe's eight-year voyage to enter orbit around Mercury, helping to reduce the spacecraft's speed to keep the trip on track. But beyond that, the maneuver also delivered some of the mission's best images so far, using BepiColombo's three monitoring cameras, or M-CAMs.
The Starlink 8-11 mission carried aloft SpaceX's 7,001st Starlink satellite, according to launch statistics kept by astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, as the 21 satellites joined 6,980 others launched by SpaceX since 2018 (though many have since been retired).
"Alien: Earth" is a new ongoing series produced by FX that will be available exclusively on Hulu in 2025 and a 15-second teaser just dropped at some screenings of "Alien: Romulus."
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