Blue Origin launches 1st crew since August 2022 | Space Quiz! What does the color of a meteorite indicate? | This Week In Space: Episode 111 - The Big Glass Wars
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Blue Origin's nearly two-year human spaceflight drought is over. Jeff Bezos' aerospace company launched its NS-25 mission today (May 19), sending six people - including the United States' first-ever Black astronaut candidate -- on a brief trip to suborbital space aboard its New Shepard rocket-capsule combo.
On Episode 111 of This Week In Space, Rod and Tariq talk with Dr. John Mulchaey, Director of the Carnegie Observatories, about the threat to completing two new giant astronomical observatories. Welcome to the Big Glass Wars! That's right, just when you thought you'd heard it all, turns out there's hot competition among a few countries to stay on the cutting edge of optical astronomy, and to do that, you need a great big hunk of glass to gather light from distant galaxies and stellar systems.
The meteor was confirmed by European Space Agency (ESA), who caught the fireball with its cameras in CΓ‘ceres, Spain, at 6:46 p.m. EDT (22:46 UTC) on Saturday (May 18). The ESA confirmed that the fireball was a piece of a comet that rocketed over Spain and Portugal, traveling at around 100,000 miles per hour, or about 65 times as fast as the top speed of a Lockheed Martin F-16 jet fighter. The ESA added that the meteor likely burned up over the Atlantic Ocean at an altitude of around 38 miles (60 kilometers) over Earth. Social media users took to X, Facebook, and Reddit by the thousands to discuss the bright fireball and share stunning images and videos.
NASA is preparing to launch its latest climate science mission, the Polar Radiant Energy in the Far-Infrared Experiment (PREFIRE), which aims to capture brand new data on how heat is lost to space from Earth's polar regions. PREFIRE consists of a pair of cubesats that will launch separately into near-polar orbits. The first, "Ready, Aim, PREFIRE," is set to launch no earlier than (NET) May 22, on a Rocket Lab Electron rocket from Pad B at the company's Launch Complex 1, in MΔhia, New Zealand. The second cubesat, "PREFIRE and ICE," will launch a few days later.
An innovative rocket system could revolutionize future deep space missions to Mars, reducing travel time to the Red Planet to just a few months. The goal of landing humans on Mars has presented a myriad of challenges, including the need to quickly transport large payloads to and from the distant planet, which, depending on the positions of Earth and Mars, would take almost two years for a round trip using current propulsion technology.
The best budget binoculars make hobbies like astronomy and birdwatching more accessible because, let's face it, investing in optics can get expensive quickly. Not everyone can afford to buy top-of-the-line products, but that doesn't mean we should be deprived of hobbies and experiences. Inexpensive binoculars can be a more economical solution for those who want to use them occasionally.
We're about to discover how "the world went quiet" in A Quiet Place: Day One, a prequel that depicts the sudden apocalypse on a much larger scale. With the critical and financial success of both A Quiet Place and A Quiet Place Part II, it should come as no surprise that we're getting more.
Yippee! "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace" blows out the candles on its 25th anniversary birthday cake yesterday. After taking in a screening during its short return to theaters for Star Wars Day week, we can honestly say that this polarizing film still has its problems but honestly elicits enough thrills to warrant a repeat viewing, if only to hear John Williams sweeping musical score and see Ray Park's acrobatic Darth Maul twirl his double-bladed lightsaber while seething with palpable hatred toward the gallant Jedi Knights.
