NASA astronaut Thomas Stafford dies at 93 | Space Quiz! Which of these can cause a supernova? | Astronauts 'thrilled' for May Starliner launch (exclusive)
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Former NASA astronaut Thomas Stafford, who flew to the moon before leading the first international space mission carried out by the United States and Russia, has died at the age of 93. Stafford's death on Monday (March 18) came after an extended illness, according to Max Ary, director of the Stafford Air and Space Museum in Oklahoma.
"It's a new capability," astronaut and oil rig engineer Deniz Burnham told Space.com, hours after her graduation. "Everyone is just thrilled. We're very excited for Suni and Butch, and it's going to be great." NASA's newest astronaut group graduated from basic training on March 5, just in time for the first Boeing Starliner test launch with astronauts, which is now expected in May. Veteran astronauts Suni Williams and Barry "Butch" Wilmore will fly Starliner on the roughly week-long International Space Station (ISS) mission, called Crew Flight Test.
Rochester is hosting more than two dozen events over the "eclipse weekend" leading up to the big day with hands-on activities, speakers, music and food sure to get everyone totally excited about totality!
Boeing has started fueling up its Starliner capsule ahead of the vehicle's first-ever astronaut launch. That mission, called Crew Flight Test (CFT), is currently scheduled to launch in early May atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, on Florida's Atlantic coast. It will send NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore to the International Space Station (ISS) for a roughly 10-day stay.
(NASA, ESA, CSA, M. Matsuura (Cardiff University), R. Arendt (NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center & University of Maryland, Baltimore County), C. Fransson (Stockholm University), J. Larsson (KTH Royal Institute of Technology), A. Pagan (STScI)/Michael Wadas, Scientific Computing and Flow Laboratory, University of Michigan)
What is particularly remarkable about SN 1987A is the fact that it is ringed by clumps of glowing hydrogen plasma - a structure that has turned into a longstanding mystery in astrophysics. A phenomenon called Rayleigh-Taylor instability is often used to explain the formation of fluid structures in plasma such as what we see around SN 1987A, but this concept alone can't fully explain the supernova remnant's cosmic jewelry.
SpaceX's Starship megarocket could eventually live up to its bold name. A future iteration of Starship, which conducted its third-ever test flight last week, will go interstellar, according to SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk. "This Starship is designed to traverse our entire solar system and beyond to the cloud of objects surrounding us. A future Starship, much larger and more advanced, will travel to other star systems," Musk said via X early Monday morning (March 18).
Notorious Mandalorian bounty hunter Jango Fett's stock in the "Star Wars" universe has soared ever since his introduction in "Star Wars: Attack of the Clones" as the DNA donor to the cloned Grand Army of the Republic and proud papa of his unaltered replica, Boba Fett.
