Solar Cycle 25 is still in max phase, so more aurora-boosting sun storms could be coming
SpaceX planning 'chopsticks' catch of Starship in early 2025 | Space Quiz! What instrument allows NASA's Euclid space telescope to view visible and near-infrared light from the early universe? | Solar Cycle 25 still in max phase, more aurora to come
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SpaceX doesn't plan to rest on its rocket-catching laurels. The company made spaceflight history on Sunday (Oct. 13) during the fifth test flight of its Starship megarocket, when the vehicle's Super Heavy booster came back to its launch mount, where it was caught by the "chopstick" arms of the launch tower. SpaceX aims to do the same with Starship's 165-foot-tall (50 meters) upper-stage spacecraft - known as Starship, or simply Ship - in the coming months as well, according to company founder and CEO Elon Musk.
You could get more opportunities to see supercharged auroras over the next few months, thanks to our very active sun. Solar activity waxes and wanes on an 11-year cycle. The current cycle, known as Solar Cycle 25, began in December 2019 and is still in its maximum phase, experts say.
The largest full moon of 2024 rises this week. On Thursday (Oct. 17) at 7:26 a.m. EDT (1126 GMT), the moon will officially turn full. And less than 11 hours earlier, at 8:48 p.m. EDT on Wednesday evening (0048 GMT on Oct. 17), the moon will also arrive at perigee, its closest point to Earth, at a distance of 221,938 miles (357,174 km) away. The result of these two occurrences will be a 14% brighter-than-average full moon accompanied by unusually high and low tides later this week into the start of the weekend.
The retirement of the International Space Station (ISS) is planned for 2030. With just six years left on the clock, private companies are vying to see their space stations reach low-Earth orbit and become the world's first-ever commercial orbital laboratory.
(ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, CEA Paris-Saclay, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre, E. Bertin, G. Anselmi CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)
The Euclid Space Telescope has revealed the "first page" of the cosmic atlas it is building. The section of the map of the cosmos being built by Euclid was released on Monday (Oct. 15), and it features tens of millions of stars within the Milky Way and around 14 million distant galaxies beyond our own.
SpaceX's centenary mission of the year lifted off from Florida, with a Falcon 9 rocket carrying 23 of the company's Starlink internet satellites aloft. The mission launched from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 2:10 a.m. EDT (0610 GMT). As usual, the Falcon 9's first-stage booster came back to Earth safely, touching down on the drone ship "A Shortfall of Gravitas" off the Florida coast about eight minutes after launch.
Fission technology is well established in power generation and nuclear-powered submarines, and its application to drive or power a rocket could one day give NASA a faster, more powerful alternative to chemically driven rockets.
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