Psychology: Non-pilots think they can land a plane after watching a YouTube video

A psychological study shows people can be over-confident in their ability to perform tasks for which they have no formal training Humans 16 March 2022 By Christa Lesté-Lasserre Pilot working through a simulation a simulation exercise Chris Urso/Tampa Bay Times/ZUMA Wire/Alamy People can be so confident they can teach themselves skills they actually lack – … Read more

NASA’s 1st Artemis moon landing will likely slip another year to 2026

NASA’s first crewed landing of the Artemis program will see boots on the moon no earlier now than 2026, the agency’s inspector general said.  NASA Inspector General Paul Martin delivered the news to lawmakers during a House Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee hearing on Tuesday (March 1) as part of a larger update on the Artemis … Read more

SpaceX launching 50 Starlink satellites, landing rocket today: Watch it live

SpaceX will launch 50 satellites and land the returning booster today (Feb. 25), and you can watch the action live. A two-stage Falcon 9 rocket topped with 50 Starlink internet spacecraft is scheduled to launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California today at 12:12 p.m. EST (1712 GMT; 9:12 a.m. local California time). You … Read more

SpaceX launching 49 Starlink satellites, landing rocket Sunday: Watch live

SpaceX will launch more than four dozen satellites and land the returning rocket on Monday (Feb. 21), and you can watch the action live. A two-stage Falcon 9 rocket topped with 49 of SpaceX’s Starlink broadband spacecraft is scheduled to lift off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station Sunday at 9:44 a.m. EST (1444 … Read more

NASA opens Nighttime Precision Landing Challenge to help future moon missions

NASA wants your help to safely land future lunar spacecraft in the dark, including permanently shadowed craters that may be icy. The agency’s new Nighttime Precision Landing Challenge No. 1 plans to award as many as three prizes of up to $650,000 each. The challenge asks applicants to create sensors able to detect hazards from … Read more

India to attempt its next moon landing with Chandrayaan 3 launch in August

India plans to give landing on the moon a second try with its Chandrayaan 3 mission, which is now targeted to launch in August. In 2019, the Chandrayaan 2 mission’s Vikram lander crashed into the moon late in the landing process, although the accompanying orbiter is still at work studying the moon from a distance. … Read more

These photos of SpaceX’s Monday launch and rocket landing are amazing

SpaceX’s launch of an Italian Earth-observation satellite was worth the wait. SpaceX originally aimed to launch the Cosmo-SkyMed Second Generation FM2 (CSG-2) satellite on Thursday (Jan. 27), but bad weather forced scrubs on three consecutive days.  Mother Nature cooperated on Sunday (Jan. 30) but a rogue cruise liner didn’t, straying into the “no-go zone” downrange … Read more

Watch this gecko smash headfirst into a tree—and still stick the landing | Science

PHOENIX—Imagine slamming your head into a wall at a Lamborghini’s top speed, and you’ve got a good sense of what it’s like for a gecko to smack headfirst into a tree as it hurtles from branch to trunk. “The landing looks quite brutal,” says Lara Ferry, an integrative biologist who studies animal morphology at Arizona … Read more

SpaceX launches 105 small satellites into orbit, nails rocket landing

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — SpaceX successfully launched its second rocket of the year Thursday morning (Jan. 13) as one of its veteran boosters carried 105 small satellites into orbit before landing back on Earth. The two-stage Falcon 9 rocket lifted off into a clear blue sky at 10:25 a.m. EST (1525 GMT) from Space Launch … Read more

Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck on sticking the landing for final ‘The Expanse’ novel, ‘Leviathan Falls’ (exclusive)

The end of a beloved novel series is always a melancholy occasion, and so it is with the ninth and final entry for authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck’s (under the pen name James S.A. Corey) multi-layered military space opera, “The Expanse.”  After ten years of intense research, plot construction, worldbuilding, and character development, the … Read more