News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
Western sanctions against Russia could cause the International Space Station (ISS) to crash, the head of Russian space agency Roscosmos warned Saturday, calling for the punitive measures to be lifted. According to Dmitry Rogozin, the sanctions, some of which predate Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, could disrupt the operation of Russian spacecraft servicing the ISS. … Read more
On the heels of a third straight successful launch from California earlier this year, Virgin Orbit plans to extend its liftoffs to the United Kingdom. The company aims to launch for the first time this summer from Spaceport Cornwall, in the western United Kingdom, Virgin Orbit announced on Wednesday (March 9). The mission will loft … Read more
The first woman on China’s space station beamed a message to Earth Tuesday (March 8) to celebrate International Women’s Day from orbit. “Dear fellow women, hello, I’m Chinese astronaut Wang Yaping. I’m currently carrying out a six-month mission in the China space station,” Wang said in the video message from aboard the orbiting Tiangong space … Read more
Earlier this year, the discovery of a potentially hazardous asteroid took astronomers on a roller coaster ride. On 6 January 2022, astronomers at the Mount Lemmon Observatory in Arizona discovered an asteroid roughly 70-meters (230 ft) across. Based on their initial observations, it appeared this object – called ‘2022 AE1‘ – could potentially hit Earth on its next pass, on … Read more
A dance of death is taking place at the heart of a galaxy in the distant Universe. Some 10 billion light-years away, two supermassive black holes are locked in an orbit so tight that they will collide with each other and form one much larger black hole in the relatively short time of just 10,000 … Read more
Neptune is the eighth planet from the sun in our solar system. This blue gas giant is far larger than Earth, at more than 17 times Earth’s mass and nearly 58 times Earth’s volume, according to NASA. Neptune’s rocky core is surrounded by a slushy fluid mix of water, ammonia and methane ice. Astronomer Galileo … Read more
A private Cygnus freighter is set to launch on a resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday (Feb. 19), and you can watch the whole thing live. Launch coverage is scheduled to start Saturday at 12:15 p.m. EST (1715 GMT) on the NASA website, the NASA app, NASA social media and here … Read more
The solar system contains eight planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, all of which circle the sun due to its intense gravitational pull. But is this the maximum number of planets that can orbit the sun? Or is there room for more? Compared with other known planetary systems, the solar system … Read more
The billionaire commander of SpaceX’s Inspiration4 mission is flying back to space again with a set of new crewmates. Shift4 CEO Jared Isaacman and SpaceX jointly announced Monday (Feb. 14) the creation of Polaris Dawn, a mission set to fly a Crew Dragon to high Earth orbit in late 2022. The mission will be the … Read more
A piece of space debris due to crash into the Moon in early March may not be a SpaceX rocket after all. According to an update posted by astronomer Bill Gray, who wrote the Project Pluto software used to track near-Earth objects, the object on a collision course is not a discarded SpaceX Falcon 9 … Read more