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The giant rockets that will carry NASA astronauts to the moon a few years from now are really starting to come together. In a brief status update posted on Tuesday (Jan. 11), NASA officials wrote that the agency and its manufacturing partners have made “great progress” on putting together the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket … Read more
NASA may need more astronauts to meet its human spaceflight goals over the coming years, according to a new report from the agency’s investigative office. Currently, NASA only flies astronauts to the International Space Station aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsules and Russia’s Soyuz vehicles. But the agency’s ambitious Artemis program to return humans to the … Read more
China’s Chang’e 5 lunar lander just marked a historic first: The spacecraft became the first to detect water on the moon at its landing site in real time. Chang’e 5 found water at its landing site near Oceanus Procellarum on the moon’s near side, using an instrument that detects water by determining spectral reflectance measurements … Read more
Mimas doesn’t show any hints of liquid water, and it seems impossible that it could have an ocean under its surface, but that’s exactly what a new set of simulations suggest Space 11 January 2022 By Leah Crane Mimas, a moon of Saturn, imaged by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute Saturn’s moon Mimas may … Read more
This zoomed image of the “mystery hut” spotted by China’s Yutu 2 rover in Von Kármán crater on the far side of the moon shows it to be a rabbit-shaped rock called “jade rabbit.” (Image credit: Ourspace/CNSA) China’s Yutu 2 rover has reached the so-called “mystery hut” on the far side of the moon that … Read more
When China’s Chang’E-5 probe visited the Moon in December of 2020, it didn’t just collect a sample of lunar material to return to Earth. While it was there, the mission took observations of the surrounding lunar rock – data vital for contextualizing the sample in future studies. Those observations have turned out to be … Read more
China’s mysterious “Moon cube” is a mystery no longer. The big reveal: It’s a rock that’s not even shaped like a cube. The nation’s Yutu-2 rover discovered the object – which appeared to be a gray cube looming on the lunar horizon – in early December. The China National Space Administration (CNSA) dubbed it ‘mysterious hut’, playfully … Read more
From a Christmas Day launch through working through Eastern Orthodox holidays, the multicultural James Webb Space Telescope team had much to celebrate this holiday season after two weeks working to get the complex telescope deployed. Webb at last unfurled its giant mirror Saturday (Jan. 8), marking the end of likely the most complicated telescope deployment … Read more
Astronaut photograph ISS066-E-86969 taken aboard the ISS on Dec. 6, 2021. (Image credit: NASA’s Earth Observatory) An astronaut aboard the International Space Station (ISS) has captured a stunning photo of a crescent moon above Earth as the last light of the setting sun shines through the different layers of the atmosphere. The photo was taken … Read more
Those two orbs we see in the sky during the day and night have even more of an influence on the animals and plants on Earth than you might think. The gravitational pull of the Sun and Moon really does appear to affect flora and fauna activity, although the exact mechanisms by which this happens … Read more