Watch Jared Isaacman during Senate hearing vote today | Space Quiz! What are the tiny ripples in the fabric of spacetime that are created when massive objects like black holes spiral toward each other and merge? | China's Shenzhou 19 astronauts return to Earth
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Billionaire philanthropist and private astronaut Jared Isaacman is headed back to Washington, D.C. as the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation votes to advance his confirmation as NASA Administrator.
The hearing will begin at 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT) and will stream live on the Senate committee website. Watch it live here courtesy of the U.S. Senate.
Space Quiz! What are the tiny ripples in the fabric of spacetime that are created when massive objects like black holes spiral toward each other and merge?
China's three-person Shenzhou 19 mission came home on Wednesday (April 30) after six months in orbit. The Shenzhou 19 spacecraft - carrying astronauts Cai Xuzhe, Song Lingdong and Wang Haoze - undocked from the Tiangong space station on Tuesday (April 29) at 4 p.m. EDT (2000 GMT; 4 a.m. on April 30 China Standard Time), according to Chinese space officials.
With the constellation Ursa Major high in the sky, late April presents an ideal opportunity to spot the 'Three Leaps of the Gazelle' asterism - a set of three stellar pairings hanging below the Great Bear's most famous feature: the seven stars of the Big Dipper.
Firefly Aerospace will launch the FLTA006 Message in a Booster mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base (VSFB), in California. Liftoff is set for 9:37 a.m. ET (1337 GMT) from Space Launch Complex-2 (SLC-2). Firefly will stream the launch live beginning at 9 a.m. (1300 GMT), which will be available on Space.com.
Cosmic echoes from some of the universe's most violent collisions are far more nuanced than scientists had realized, according to new research. Like the lingering chime of a struck bell, tiny ripples in the fabric of spacetime are created when massive objects like black holes spiral toward each other and merge into a single, larger black hole. These ripples are known as "gravitational waves," and astronomers rely on theoretical models to decode the waves' faint signals, both in the final moments leading up to the merger and in the aftermath.
Scientists announced they have developed an artificial intelligence program capable of designing gravitational wave detectors that outperform human-made versions, potentially supercharging our ability to "hear" the universe.
Watch Firefly Aerospace's Alpha rocket launch for 6th time | Amazon launches first 'Project Kuiper' internet satellites | See a wafer-thin crescent moon leapfrog Jupiter this week
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Firefly Aerospace will launch the FLTA006 Message in a Booster mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base (VSFB), in California. Liftoff is set for 9:37 a.m. ET (1337 GMT) from Space Launch Complex-2 (SLC-2). Firefly will stream the launch live beginning at 9 a.m. (1300 GMT), which will be available on Space.com.
The assembly of Amazon's big new satellite-internet constellation is underway. A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket lifted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station today (April 28) at 7:01 p.m. EDT (2301 GMT), carrying 27 of Amazon's "Project Kuiper" broadband spacecraft toward low Earth orbit (LEO). It was the first of more than 80 planned launches to build out the Project Kuiper megaconstellation, which will eventually harbor more than 3,200 spacecraft.
The delicate form of the crescent moon is set to draw close to the planet Jupiter in the post-sunset sky on April 29, before later making its closest approach to the gas giant from the perspective of Earth on April 30. Earth's moon is currently emerging from its April 27 new moon phase, during which it passed between the sun and Earth, causing its shadow-drenched disk to be temporarily lost from sight in the sun's glare. In the coming days the moon will form a waxing crescent, which will grow steadily larger in the run-up to its first quarter phase, which will happen on Sunday, May 4.
"I didn't look too good because I didn't feel too good," Pettit told reporters during a press conference from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston on Monday afternoon (April 28). "I was right in the middle of emptying the contents of my stomach onto the steppes of Kazakhstan." The camera didn't show any of this, a fact that sparked some worry among folks watching NASA's landing webcast: Was Pettit all right? Had he been whisked away to a hospital or something?
Neutron stars are some of the weirdest cosmic objects, and the greatest mysteries lie deep in their hearts. Neutron stars are the leftover cores of exploded stars and the densest known material in the universe. A typical neutron star has a mass a few times the mass of the sun, compressed into a region only a dozen kilometers across. In the outermost layers of neutron stars, the density is billions of times greater than the density of a diamond. In the cores of neutron stars, the crushing pressures can squeeze apart atomic nuclei, and maybe even protons and neutrons themselves.
SpaceX sent another batch of Starlink satellites to orbit last night (April 28), its second liftoff of the day. A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 23 Starlink broadband satellites - including 13 with direct-to-cell capability - lifted off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida Monday at 10:34 p.m. EDT (0234 GMT on April 29). It was the second Starlink group to fly yesterday; a Falcon 9 lofted 27 of the internet craft from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base earlier in the afternoon.
Declassified images from U.S. military satellites are helping find forgotten mine fields in Cambodia. From the late 1960s almost until the end of the 1990s, a bloody war between communist groups and democracy defenders raged, with a few short breaks, in the jungles and on the rice fields of Cambodia. The conflict left behind a hidden legacy that keeps increasing the war's death toll to this day.