News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
A stunning new video from SpaceX captures what it’s like to watch a rocket launch from mid-air and then witness the booster return to Earth. The video, captured by a flying SpaceX drone, shows the company’s launch of the classified NROL-87 satellite for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office. The mission lifted off on a Falcon … Read more
A streak of purple “lightning” sprawls across the cosmos in a gorgeous new image from NASA. Light and energy twist and turn in an explosive relationship between a stellar corpse known as a white dwarf and a variable red giant star called R Aquarii (R Aqr) orbiting each other out in space. NASA’s Chandra X-ray … Read more
The latest amazing, action-packed apocalyptic movie from the master of mayhem, the captain of calamity, Roland Emmerich is about to hit the big screen. In the movie “Moonfall” — which arrives in theaters across the U.S. on Friday (Feb. 4) — for reasons unknown, Earth’s only natural satellite is on a collision course with our … Read more
China’s Tianwen 1 Mars orbiter is once again delivering stunning imagery, with a new video released to celebrate the lunar New Year. The 38-second clip shows shadows and sunlight moving across the body of Tianwen 1, with the sunlight causing insulation to move slightly due to thermal expansion. Mars then appears below the spacecraft, with … Read more
In “Moonfall,” the latest movie from the so-called “master of disaster” Roland Emmerich, Earth faces an extinction-level event caused by an alien that’s been living on the moon. Despite being plentiful in planetary destruction overflowing with explosions and incorporating an abundant amount of action, you might be surprised at how much care and consideration went … Read more
“Top Gun” star Tom Cruise and NASA astronaut Victor Glover bonded virtually over fast planes and SpaceX spaceships in a wide-ranging conversation about astronaut training. NASA’s Johnson Space Flight Center posted the hour-long conversation on YouTube on Friday (Jan. 28), rebroadcasting a November 2021 conversation during the World Extreme Medicine conference. Cruise is the one … Read more
Our eyes are continuously bombarded by an enormous amount of visual information – millions of shapes, colors, and ever-changing motion all around us. For the brain, this is no easy feat. On the one hand, the visual world alters continuously because of changes in light, viewpoint, and other factors. On the other, our visual … Read more
NASA released a new video today (Jan. 27) to remember the three crews and other fallen astronauts who lost their lives in the pursuit of space exploration. The agency’s annual “Day of Remembrance” falls this year on the 55th anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire of Jan. 27, 1967. The week that follows includes two … Read more
Astra took another step forward in preparing for its first-ever launch of operational satellites. The California company performed a “static fire” test with its Rocket 3.3 vehicle at Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Saturday (Jan. 22), briefly igniting the launcher’s first-stage engines while keeping it anchored to the pad. The test is part … Read more
The “Sesame Street” friends got a pretty good guide to lead them on their latest space adventure. Former NASA astronaut Mae Jemison guest stars on the latest episode of “Sesame Street,” which airs Thursday (Jan. 27) on HBO Max. She appears in an 11-minute clip that also features “Sesame Street” residents Elmo, Cookie Monster and Abby … Read more