NASA's Artemis 1 moon rocket arrived at the launch pad Friday morning (Nov. 4) and is now being prepared for launch to the moon in as soon as 10 days.
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Week in images: 31 October - 4 November 2022
Week in images: 31 October - 4 November 2022
'Avatar: The Way of Water' trailer dives back into Pandora
20th Century Studios delivers a second full trailer for December's "Avatar: The Way of Water."
Mars rover documentary 'Good Night Oppy' rolls into movie theaters today
Director Ryan White's heartbreaking documentary "Good Night Oppy" lands in movie theaters.
Astronaut Starry Sky Star Projector review
A star projector ideal for any space fan, the Astronaut Starry Sky Star Projector offers great value-for-money as a space gift with plenty of fun thrown in.
Whew! 23-ton Chinese rocket debris falls to Earth over Pacific Ocean
A 23-ton rocket body from China's launch of a Long March 5B rocket has fallen safely into the south-central Pacific Ocean after creating questions over where it will come down once again.
Our Guide to Tuesday’s Total Lunar Eclipse
The November 8th total lunar eclipse spans the Pacific and is the last until 2025.
A massive space rock impact may have kickstarted Earth's magnetic field
The interplanetary collision that formed the moon might have more connections to Earth's ancient history than we ever imagined.
See the moon visit Jupiter in the sky on Friday (Nov.4)
Skywatchers will have an excellent opportunity to spot Jupiter on Friday when the moon makes a close approach in the sky to the massive gas giant, the largest planet in the solar system.
Don't miss the Beaver Blood Moon lunar eclipse on Nov. 8
The second lunar eclipse of 2022 – a total lunar eclipse – will happen on the morning of Tuesday, Nov. 8 when the moon moves into the darkest part of Earth's shadow.
This Week's Sky at a Glance, November 4 – 12
The Moon gets totally eclipsed this week as it walks from Jupiter to Mars, the two brightest evening planets. Saturn is at eastern quadrature, which means an effect is under way for evening telescope users.
Record breaker! Newfound black hole is closest known to Earth
A black hole 10 times more massive than our sun lurks just 1,560 light-years from Earth — about twice as close as the previous proximity champ.
Earth from Space: Nushagak Bay, Alaska
The complex and diverse landscape that surrounds Nushagak Bay in Alaska is featured in this true-colour image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.
Researchers Make Rocket Fuel Using Actual Regolith From the Moon
In-situ resource utilization is a hot topic these days in space exploration circles, and scientists and engineers have had a great advantage of getting access to new materials from bodies on the solar system that either have never been seen before, such as asteroids or haven’t been visited in decades, such as the moon. Recently, China’s Chang’e 5 brought back the first sample of lunar regolith to Earth in almost 50 years. Using part of that sample, researchers from several Chinese universities have developed an automated system to create rocket fuel and oxygen out of CO2, using the lunar regolith as a catalyst.
ESA is Considering a Mission to Enceladus
There are plenty of exciting places in the solar system to explore. But few are more interesting than Saturn’s moon Enceladus. It’s one of the only planetary bodies known to have all six necessary components of Earth-based life. It has an active ocean and most likely hydrothermal vents, similar to those on Earth, where some species exist entirely separately from any solar-powered biosphere. All of this makes it one of the most likely candidates for life in the solar system – and the center of much astrobiological attention. Now a team from a variety of European countries and the US has proposed a mission to the moon that could profoundly impact our understanding of our place in the universe – if the European Space Agency (ESA) funds it.
How do you Keep a Solar Sail Stable?
Solar sailing seems like a simple concept – instead of being pushed along by the wind, as in a typical sailing ship, a spacecraft can use highly reflective said to be pushed along simply by sunlight. But as with almost all engineering challenges, that technique is much easier said than done. Sunlight can head up one side of a sail more than another, causing the ship to rotate unexpectedly. Other unforeseen situations could arise that can also have catastrophic consequences for any mission using this propulsion technology. Luckily, there is a way to account for those situations, though it involves a lot of math. Control theory is common in system design, and now researchers at Beihang University have devised a control scheme that they think could help minimize the risk to solar sails.
Rocket Lab’s next launch will feature mid-air booster recovery attempt
A camera on Rocket Lab’s recovery helicopter shows the Electron booster under its parachute following launch in May. Credit: Rocket Lab
Rocket Lab will try again Friday to catch an Electron first stage booster after launching from New Zealand with a small Swedish science satellite, six months after the company’s first mid-air recovery attempt.
SpaceX launches Airbus-built TV broadcasting spacecraft for Eutelsat
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 1:22 a.m. EDT (0522 GMT) Thursday with the Hotbird 13G communications satellite. Credit: Stephen Clark / Spaceflight Now
SpaceX launched the second in a series of three Falcon 9 rocket missions early Thursday for the European satellite operator Eutelsat, delivering to orbit a television broadcasting craft that also hosts an EU-funded payload to provide precise navigation data to airplanes.
NASA’s Artemis 1 moon rocket ready for ride back to launch pad
NASA’s Space Launch System moon rocket inside High Bay 3 of the Vehicle Assembly Building. Credit: NASA
After replacing and recharging batteries in the Vehicle Assembly Building, NASA ground teams plan to roll the more than 30-story-tall Space Launch System rocket back to its launch pad early Friday at Kennedy Space Center for another try Nov. 14 to send the Artemis 1 test flight around the moon.
A 23-ton Chinese rocket will fall to Earth Friday. But when and where will it land?
A huge hunk of Chinese space junk is expected to crash back to Earth on Friday (Nov. 4), but nobody knows exactly where or when it will come down.
NASA X-ray observatory reveals how black holes swallow and spit out matter
The X-ray binary system Cygnus X-1 is chomping on matter stolen from a companion star.
