'We will prioritize sending American astronauts to Mars' | Space Quiz! What is the term for a planet outside our solar system? | NOAA layoffs affected service that tracks solar storms
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In his inaugural address on Jan. 20, Trump said the U.S. "will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the stars and stripes on the planet Mars." Jared Isaacman, the billionaire entrepreneur and private astronaut Trump has tapped to lead the agency, echoed those desires during his nomination hearing today (April 9) before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
In February, massive layoffs swept across the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in compliance with requests from the Trump administration. These cuts resulted in industry-wide concerns about immediate impacts to weather forecasts and climate studies on Earth - but experts are also worried that such abrupt reductions in the NOAA workforce can greatly affect how scientists monitor cosmic weather, too.
During the 2024 total solar eclipse that captured the attention of space lovers across North America, something was going on with the birds. Scientists documented an unexpected shift in birds' vocal behaviors during the eclipse using data from 344 community-based monitoring devices known as Haikuboxes. Researchers from Loggerhead Instruments, Inc. and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics managed to use these boxes to glean clear evidence that birds responded audibly to the celestial event.
NASA's next special delivery to the International Space Station has a launch date, but it's going to be one for early-birds. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch an uncrewed Dragon cargo ship packed with tons of supplies on Monday, April 21, from the historic Pad 39A of NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Liftoff is set for 4:15 a.m. EDT (0815 GMT), making it a predawn launch.
When a planet is born from swirling pockets of molecular gas and dust that surround a young star, it forms under conditions of intense gravity and pressure. The process is violent, the first stages of a planet's life are chaotic, and newborn worlds are often scorching hot. Scientists have long assumed that, under these extreme conditions, the raw materials involved in the formation of worlds - gas, ice, rock and a mix of metals - don't really interact much with one another. However, it may be time to revisit this idea. A team of researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles and Princeton University have questioned that assumption, wondering instead if an exoplanet could serve as a natural laboratory in which molecules interact in surprising ways within the seething heat of its atmosphere and core.
The U.S. military is considering Johnston Atoll, a remote Pacific island chain that serves as an important refuge for dozens of seabird species, for "two commercial rocket landing pads" to test giant cargo rocket landings for the Department of the Air Force's (DAF) Rocket Cargo Vanguard program, and it's getting push-back from environmentalists.
Colorado-based Lunar Outpost just unveiled its new "Eagle" moon rover at the Space Foundation's 40th annual Space Symposium here, and it looks straight out of science fiction. Sporting a sleek metallic finish and ice-blue LED lighting, the Eagle rover turned quite a few heads on the expo floor this year. But Eagle boasts more than just futuristic looks.
