Launched

Gaze in Awe at This Breathtaking Hubble Image of an Outburst From a Baby Star

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An epic outburst from a baby star still in the process of forming has been captured in a spectacular Hubble image. Roughly 1,250 light-years away, in the Orion molecular cloud star-forming region, jets from a protostar are punching through the cloud at supersonic speeds, heating the gas and causing it to glow brightly. The result … Read more

For The First Time, There Has Been an Unplanned Spacecraft Crash With The Moon

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Add one more crater to the long list of pockmarks on the lunar surface. According to orbital calculations, a rocket hurtling through space for years crashed into the Moon on Friday, but the strike wasn’t directly observed, and there might be a wait for photographic evidence.   The impact would have taken place at 7:25 … Read more

Moon mystery: Who launched the rocket that will slam into the lunar far side?

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There’s an ongoing saga about the object that will smash into the far side of the moon early next month. First thought to be the upper stage of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that launched the DSCOVR Earth-observation spacecraft in February 2015, it was then tagged as a leftover from the launch of China’s Chang’e … Read more

Powerful Geomagnetic Storm Sends Dozens of SpaceX Satellites to a Fiery Doom

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A powerful geomagnetic storm has doomed 40 Starlink satellites launched by SpaceX last week, the company has announced. Elon Musk‘s company launched a Falcon 9 rocket bearing the 49 satellites from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday (Feb. 3), but a geomagnetic storm that struck a day later sent the satellites plummeting back toward Earth, … Read more

What happened at the Arecibo Observatory? New inquiry launched into iconic telescope’s collapse.

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It’s been more than a year since scientists lost one of the most iconic telescopes ever built — and yet the collapse of the famed Arecibo Observatory remains something of a mystery. Nestled into the jungle of Puerto Rico, the Arecibo Observatory‘s jewel was its vast radio dish, spanning 1,000 feet (305 meters) across and … Read more

NASA’s newly launched X-ray space telescope is ready to start observing the cosmos

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA’s newest space observatory, the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), is set to begin spying on some of the universe’s most dramatic objects — black holes and neutron stars — potentially changing our understanding of the cosmos in the process.  The 730-pound (330 kilograms) IXPE satellite launched to orbit on Dec. … Read more

’29 days on the edge:’ What’s next for NASA’s newly launched James Webb Space Telescope

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NASA’s next big space observatory is finally aloft, but it’ll be a while before it starts its highly anticipated science mission. The $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope launched atop an Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana yesterday (Dec. 25), kicking off a long-delayed, potentially transformative mission to study the early universe, nearby exoplanets and … Read more

Success! The James Webb Space Telescope Has Launched

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The world’s most powerful space telescope on Saturday blasted off into orbit, headed to an outpost 1.5 million kilometres (930,000 miles) from Earth, after several delays caused by technical hitches.   The James Webb Space Telescope, some three decades and billions of dollars in the making, left Earth enclosed in its Ariane 5 rocket from … Read more

The James Webb Space Telescope Has Launched: Now Comes the Hard Part

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The relief was as deep as the stakes were high. At 7:20 A.M. (ET), the rocket carrying the largest, most ambitious space telescope in history cleared the launchpad in French Guiana, and the members of mission control at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore roared their elation. The suspense was not quite over. Half … Read more