SpaceBalloon ready to fly to the edge of space (exclusive) | Intuitive Machines lands on moon in nail-biting descent | Soundscapes Project to record eclipse impact on nature
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Ever wanted to see the cosmos, but not too keen on buckling-up for a rocket's high-g, explosively-controlled ascent into space? You're in luck: Space Perspective will bring you there in a balloon. "We're going to be taking unprecedented numbers of people to space."
It was a landmark moment for space exploration: No private spacecraft had ever soft-landed on the moon before, and an American vehicle hadn't hit the gray dirt softly since NASA's crewed Apollo 17 lander did so in December 1972. "What a triumph! Odysseus has taken the moon," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a video message the agency aired just after confirmation of a successful touchdown. "This feat is a giant leap forward for all of humanity. Stay tuned!"
While humans will enjoy the majesty of the total solar eclipse as it sweeps across several states in the U.S. on April 8, 2024, the celestial event will also be experienced by flora and fauna. That's why the NASA-funded Eclipse Soundscapes Project will observe and collate the sights and sounds of the total solar eclipse to allow humanity to better understand how such events can impact wildlife. The agency is also urging the public to join in on this effort.
Moon phases reveal the passage of time in the night sky. Some nights when we look up at the moon, it is full and bright; sometimes it is just a sliver of silvery light. These changes in appearance are the phases of the moon. As the moon orbits Earth, it cycles through eight distinct phases.
A California startup's first in-space manufacturing effort is in the books. The capsule from Varda Space Industries' W-1 mission landed in northern Utah this afternoon (Feb. 21), bringing down to Earth crystals of an antiviral drug that were grown in orbit. The success makes Varda just the third company to recover an intact spacecraft from orbit. The other two are aerospace giants SpaceX (with its Dragon vehicles) and Boeing (with its Starliner capsule).
NASA's New Horizons mission, which encountered Pluto in 2015 is now riding through the deepest depths of the Kuiper Belt, is encountering a cosmic dust storm that hints there may be more going on in the outermost reaches of the solar system than we imagine.
SpaceX tied its rocket-reuse record on Thursday night. A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 22 of SpaceX's Starlink broadband satellites lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Thursday at 11:11 p.m. EST (8:11 p.m. local California time; 0411 GMT on Feb. 23). It was the 19th mission for this Falcon 9's first stage, according to a SpaceX mission description, tying a mark the company set on a Starlink launch this past December.
Last year, using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers made the startling discovery of some free-floating, planetary-mass objects in the Orion nebula that threw their ideas of planet and star formation into doubt. And now, new research has further deepened the mystery around these so-called Jupiter-mass binary objects, or JuMBOs.
