Weather delays SpaceX Polaris Dawn astronaut launch | Paralympic Games shaped astronaut's space career | Night sky for tonight: Visible planets, stars and more
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SpaceX's historic Polaris Dawn astronaut mission has been delayed again. Polaris Dawn was originally scheduled to launch early Monday morning (Aug. 26) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, but SpaceX pushed things back a day to perform more preflight checkouts. The company then called the planned Tuesday (Aug. 27) attempt off after detecting a helium leak, targeting Wednesday (Aug. 28) instead. But now Mother Nature has foiled that plan.
Astronaut John McFall medaled in the Paralympics in 2008, and the lessons he learned from that experience are helping him today as a person who may one day fly to the International Space Station.
On Friday morning, Aug. 30, early risers can see the waning crescent moon forming a line below Gemini's two brightest stars in the eastern sky. Pollux, the lower star is brighter and more yellowish in color than its "twin", the double star Castor, above it. Even as the sky begins to brighten ahead of sunrise, the bright stars of winter will sparkle off to the right of Gemini and the moon.
The inaugural flight of Blue Origin's New Glenn heavy-lift rocket, which will send NASA's ESCAPADE mission on its way to Mars, now has a tentative launch date. NASA announced on Monday (Aug. 26) that the mission will launch no earlier than Oct. 13. Blue Origin's first New Glenn rocket will lift off from Space Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, debuting at last after years of delays in its development.
A mysterious ring of radio light could have been created by a type of massive star with a powerful wind of radiation blowing away its outer layers, according to astronomers who made the discovery with the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa.
A Falcon 9 successfully launched 21 of SpaceX's Starlink satellites this morning (Aug. 28), sending them to orbit on the record-breaking 23rd mission for the rocket's first stage. That booster encountered a problem during its return to Earth, however, toppling over shortly after landing at sea on a SpaceX droneship. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced today that it's requiring an investigation into the failed touchdown - and that the Falcon 9 won't fly again until that inquiry has wrapped up.
Japan has called an end to its SLIM moon mission after failing to make contact with the lander since April. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) on a H-IIA rocket from the Tanegashima Space Center on Sep. 7, 2023. The diminutive lander made a successful, yet lopsided, landing on the rim of Shioli Crater on Jan. 19 this year. Designed to operate for a single lunar day on the surface, the 440 pounds (200 kilograms) solar-powered lander sprang a major surprise by surviving three separate frigid lunar nights.
