SpaceX has dreamed up a Dragon ship on steroids | Space Quiz! How fast do millisecond pulsars spin? | Russia unveils timeline for building its new space station
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SpaceX's new vehicle to bring down the International Space Station will be a monster. The SpaceX deorbit vehicle, a variant of its workhorse Dragon spacecraft, will carry 46 Draco thrusters to send the International Space Station (ISS) to its end in the south Pacific Ocean in the next decade, the company said in remarks last week. That's triple the usual 16 on board Cargo Dragon missions to the ISS.
Russia has unveiled a comprehensive roadmap for building its newest space station and associated Earth-based infrastructure, with the first modules expected to launch within three years.
Saturn is back. The sixth planet from the sun and the second largest in the solar system is at the top of most amateur astronomers' wish list. In July, it rises just before midnight and is high in the south before sunrise, but there are two nights this month when the famously "ringed planet" is visited by a waning gibbous moon.
ABL Space Systems will have to wait a while to conduct its second-ever orbital launch. The California-based startup has been prepping its RS1 rocket for a test flight, which will lift off from the Pacific Spaceport Complex in Alaska. But that vehicle is no longer in any condition to earn its wings.
Using a NASA X-ray telescope mounted on the International Space Station (ISS), astronomers have weighed a rapidly spinning dead star that signifies the heart of the closest millisecond pulsar to Earth.
The space agency's Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) project had undergone a comprehensive internal review. NASA found price tag sticker shock, delays to the launch date, and risk of future cost growth - reasons to "stand down" the lunar ice-hound mission.
"Wild Wild Space" is a newly released HBO documentary that tracks the progress of three venture-funded space companies over the course of several years, all of them operating in the very large shadow of Elon Musk's market-dominating SpaceX.
The 25-year evolution of the Federation's clandestine spy division known as Section 31 and its presentation within the "Star Trek" universe has taken a few twists and turns over the years. This covert operations unit has morphed from its introduction as an autonomous intelligence agency in the 1998 episode of "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" titled "Inquisition," to being considered for it's own proposed TV series, and now to "Star Trek's" very first streaming film for Paramount+.
Lou Dobbs, Space.com founder, dies at 78 | Space Quiz! What threatens the potential for complex organic molecules to persist on the surfaces of Europa and Enceladus? | This Week In Space: Apollo 11 and Looking Ahead
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Lou Dobbs, the distinguished political pundit, bestselling author, radio host and popular broadcast fixture on CNN and Fox Business News has died at the age of 78. Dobbs helped launch Space.com in 1999, served as Space.com's first CEO and one of its majority shareholders until 2001 when he stepped down from his post and returned to CNN.
On Episode 120 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik dive into the 55th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, discussing the mission's highlights, challenges, and historical significance. They also cover recent space news, including Elon Musk's plans to move SpaceX's headquarters to Texas, the Falcon 9 upper stage failure, and the cancellation of NASA's VIPER rover mission. Looking ahead, the hosts speculate on the future of the Artemis program and the political landscape's influence on space exploration.
From a close encounter between Saturn and the moon to the Southern Delta-Aquariids and a good view of the Northern Crown, there is much to see this week (July 22 to July 28) using just your naked eye.
NASA says its next spacewalk will be delayed indefinitely until engineers understand more about what caused a coolant leak on June 24. Tracy Dyson, a NASA astronaut, had a brief spacesuit leak a month ago while still in the hatch of the International Space Station (ISS). She and Mike Barrett had just opened the door for a 6.5-hour spacewalk for maintenance activities, when showers of ice particles erupted from a spacesuit connection to the ISS. The spacewalk was suspended, but the astronauts were never in any danger, NASA has emphasized.
NASA's Cassini-Huygens spacecraft may have dramatically ended its 20-year mission to explore Saturn's neighborhood seven years ago, when it plunged to into the gas giant, but it is still delivering the scientific goods.
SpaceX's privately-funded crewed mission, Polaris Dawn, is moving toward a launch sometime this summer. The four-person crew, which includes the mission's funder, billionaire philanthropist Jared Isaacman, recently completed acceptance testing for SpaceX's new extravehicular activity (EVA) spacesuits, which they will wear as they become the first private citizens to perform a spacewalk on orbit.
(NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS Image processing: Kevin M. Gill CC BY 3.0)
Scientists have long theorized that both Enceladus, one of Saturn's 146 known moons, and Europa, one of Jupiter's four large Galilean moons among its total 95 moons, could host vast liquid water oceans that harbor life. If this is the case, then complex organic molecules like amino acids and nucleic acids, the building blocks of life as we know it, could serve as "biosignatures" of life on the worlds.
New York Times bestselling novelist Greg Cox is a household name within the Trekkie literary community who’s penned dozens of "Star Trek" universe novels and short stories over the years. Now he's back with "Star Trek: The Original Series: Lost to Eternity," a new 400-page trifecta of "Star Trek" movie-era tales arriving July 23, 2024, tied together with the common theme of an ancient extraterrestrial civilization and the reappearance of a fan favorite character from "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home."
