NASA to pick Artemis astronaut moon car today: Watch live | Space Quiz! What was the first spacecraft to fly through the sun's outer atmosphere? | China plans to catch its reusable rockets with wires (video)
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The curtain is about to rise on NASA's next moon car. The space agency will announce the company, or companies, that it has selected to develop the rover for its Artemis program of lunar exploration during a press conference today (April 3) at 4 p.m. EDT (2000 GMT). You can watch the event live here at Space.com
While inspired by the overwhelming success of the SpaceX Falcon 9, China's approach will be slightly different. The rocket's first stage will still use variable-thrust engines to slow its descent, just like the Falcon 9. But instead of using landing legs, the rocket will deploy hooks near its top, which will be caught by tightwires.
New amateur calculations of the solar eclipse path suggest that variations in the local terrain might change if you see a total eclipse, or how long the eclipse is experienced, compared to older estimates. The work, first reported in Forbes, is not peer-reviewed, however. So take the findings with a dose of caution.
An unusual "horned" comet is now visible in the night sky -- and it may even make a rare appearance during the 2024 total solar eclipse on April 8. Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks can currently be seen in the night skies of the northern hemisphere. Comets, composed of dust, rock and ices, heat up and expel gas when their orbits bring them closer to the sun, creating a glowing halo around the comet itself known as a coma. Outbursts observed from Comet 12P give it a horned-like appearance, earning it nicknames such as "Devil Comet" and "Millennium Falcon."
A big piece of Chinese space junk crashed to Earth over Southern California early Tuesday morning (April 2), putting on quite a show for observers in the Golden State. The fall created a blazing fireball witnessed by people from the Sacramento area all the way down to San Diego, according to the American Meteor Society (AMS). As of Tuesday afternoon, 81 people had reported sightings of the event to the AMS.
The first crewed launch of Boeing's new Starliner capsule has been delayed by an additional five days, to May 6. NASA and Boeing had been targeting May 1 for the highly anticipated Starliner mission, which is known as Crew Flight Test (CFT). But that's no longer the plan.
Every so often, the sun's simmering magnetic field burps colossal clouds of plasma out into the space beyond. These are called coronal mass ejections (CMEs). If one CME strikes Earth, for example, the result can be spectacular auroras - and, just-as-spectacular disruptions of electrical grids and satellites.
It can now be revealed that Japan's proposal for a future moon rover is "more than meets the eye." As first announced last June but just now starting to ship, a new scale model of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) Lunar Cruiser not only faithfully reproduces the details of the astronaut transport developed in conjunction with Toyota, but also transforms into Optimus Prime, the leader of the Autobots.
First announced back in 2019 as an entirely new theme park within the sprawling Universal Orlando Resort campus in Florida, Universal Epic Universe will feature five elaborately imagined lands and a galaxy of thrill rides, shops and eateries when it opens its portals in 2025 - and we've got the recently released concept art to prove it.
I'm taking the train to see the solar eclipse in Canada | Varda Space's meds: 'Them space drugs cooked real good' | April 8 solar eclipse: 6 zoos on the path of totality
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So often, space events require me to get on a plane and jet far away - the five human spaceflight launches I witnessed in Kazakhstan and Florida, for example, or the Artemis 2 astronaut announcement a year ago on the other side of the continent in Houston. I was certainly lucky to be in those places and to see those sights. But I can do this total solar eclipse, this one special space thing, near Ottawa. Why not enjoy it here, and let others I care about come along for the ride?
After some seven months in space, Varda Space Industries' W-1 capsule successfully returned to Earth, carrying with it a unique payload: the HIV/AIDS medication ritonavir. Varda Space seeks to autonomously manufacture pharmaceuticals in microgravity, a strategy that could ultimately reduce the cost of life-saving drugs - and, according to a new preprint paper, the company is one step closer to achieving that goal.
Total solar eclipses make animals behave in strange ways. To see for yourself, stop by one of these zoos located on the path of totality on April 8, 2024.
There is a gap in our observations of the sun: Part of its atmosphere is effectively invisible to our telescopes. However, images taken from Earth during a solar eclipse are filling in that hole, providing an unprecedented look at our star's hidden layer.
The total solar eclipse on April 8 is part of a repeating pattern of eclipses that last visited North America in 1970, and will visit again in 2078. Here's why the same eclipse repeats every 54 years.
SpaceX launched another batch of its Starlink internet satellites on Monday (April 1). A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 22 Starlink spacecraft lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Bad weather scuttled two previous tries at the launch. This time the weather cooperated and the Falcon 9 left the pad at 10:30 p.m. EDT (7:30 p.m. Pacific time or 0230 GMT on April 2).
Astronomers are hunting for planets in the process of forming around infant stars using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The powerful space telescope quickly delivered the goods, albeit in an unexpected way. These infant planets take shape in swirling clumps of gas and dust called protoplanetary disks, gathering more mass as they do so. Humanity has imaged many of these protoplanetary disks, but astronomers have only glimpsed the forming planets within them a few times to date.
(Pascal Fouquet, United States, Winner, National Awards, Sony World Photography Awards 2024)
A rocket transiting the moon is a pretty rare sight. Capturing a good photo of that kind of transit takes some serious skill. That skill is worthy of some major praise. Pascal Fouquet, a photographer from Orlando, Florida, captured such a shot, and was chosen as the United States' National Award first place winner for the Sony World Photography Awards 2024. The awards program comes out of a partnership between Sony and the World Photography Organization, and receives hundreds of thousands of photo submission from across the globe.
Frank Herbert's Dune is epic sci-fi storytelling with an environmental message at its heart. The novels and movies are set on the desert planet of Arrakis, which various characters dream of transforming into a greener world - much like some envision for Mars today. We investigated Arrakis using a climate model, a computer program similar to those used to give weather forecasts. We found the world that Herbert had created, well before climate models even existed, was remarkably accurate - and would be habitable, if not hospitable.
One of the best ways to stay immersed in the world of "Star Wars" between offerings of feature films, TV series, novels and comics is to clear off the kitchen table and indulge in one of the many trading card games (TCGs) set in the "Star Wars" universe.
