Tag: Space and Astronomy

Hunting the Northern Lights in Iceland

From the outside, it may seem like the northern lights dance across Iceland’s skies each night. On Icelandair ads, planes fly across shimmering curtains in the sky. On social media, travelers gaze at the green bands above them. The lights are even on some recycling bins in Reykjavík, the capital: “Keep Iceland Clean.” In the […]

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NASA Is Recruiting a New Class of Astronauts

Do you dream of leaving the planet? NASA is looking for its next group of astronauts, and you have until April 2 to make a pitch for yourself. “Typically, it’s a very popular application,” April Jordan, NASA’s astronaut selection manager, said. The odds that you will be chosen are slim. The last time NASA put […]

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A Space Rock Fell Into Sweden. Who Owns It on Earth?

The iron rock’s journey from the depths of space ended with a thud in a dense pine forest, about an hour north of Stockholm, around 10 on a November night four years ago. Unusually, its trajectory was caught on several cameras in the region used to track meteoroids. That led to a weekslong hunt and […]

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Walter Massey, a Physicist With a Higher Calling

The day before Walter Massey turned 30, in 1968, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was fatally shot on a hotel balcony in Memphis. Dr. Massey, then a physicist at Argonne National Laboratory, watched the funeral on television, in tears, from his apartment in Chicago. Outside, the west side of the city was burning. […]

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Thomas Stafford, 93, Commander of First U.S.-Soviet Space Mission, Dies

Thomas P. Stafford, an astronaut who pioneered cooperation in space when he commanded the American capsule that linked up with a Soviet spaceship in July 1975, died on Monday in Satellite Beach, Fla. He was 93. His death, in a retirement home, was confirmed by his wife, Linda. She said he had recently been diagnosed […]

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For Ytasha Womack, the Afrofuture is Now

On Feb. 17, the Adler Planetarium in Chicago unveiled a new sky show called “Niyah and the Multiverse,” a blend of theoretical cosmology, Black culture and imagination. And as with many things Afrofuturistic, Ytasha Womack’s fingerprints are all over it. Ms. Womack, who writes both about the genre and from within it, has curated Afrofuturism […]

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Taiwan Is Building a Satellite Network Without Elon Musk

In Taiwan, the government is racing to do what no country or even company has been able to: build an alternative to Starlink, the satellite internet service operated by Elon Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX. Starlink has allowed militaries, power plants and medical workers to maintain crucial online connections when primary infrastructure has failed in emergencies, […]

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SpaceX Successfully Launches Starship for a Third Time

The third try turned out to be closer to the charm for Elon Musk and SpaceX, as company’s mammoth Starship rocket launched on Thursday and traveled about halfway around the Earth before it was lost as it re-entered the atmosphere. The test flight achieved several key milestones in the development of the vehicle, which could […]

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Pentagon Review Finds No Evidence of Alien Cover-Up

In the 1960s, secret test flights of advanced government spy planes generated U.F.O. sightings. More recently, government and commercial drones, new kinds of satellites and errant weather balloons have led to a renaissance in unusual observations. But, according to a new report, none of these sightings were of alien spacecraft. The new congressionally mandated Pentagon […]

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Good News and Bad News for Astronomers’ Biggest Dream

The United States should commit $1.6 billion to building an “extremely large telescope” that would vault American astronomy into a new era, according to the National Science Board, which advises the National Science Foundation. In a statement on Feb. 27, the board gave the foundation until May to decide how to choose between two competing […]

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Putin’s Nukes in Space Are Back to Scare Us Again

In 1982, President Ronald Reagan was considering what became known as “Star Wars,” a plan to shield America from Soviet missiles by deploying up to thousands of weapons in space. At the same time, as a young science writer, I was reporting on how the rays from a single nuclear detonation in orbit could wipe […]

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Europa, Thought to Be Habitable, May Be Oxygen-Starved

Under its bright, frosty shell, Jupiter’s moon Europa is thought to harbor a salty ocean, making it a world that might be one of the most habitable places in our solar system. But life as we know it needs oxygen. And it’s an open question whether Europa’s ocean has it. Now, astronomers have nailed down […]

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Odysseus Spacecraft Lands on Moon, First Time for U.S. Since 1972

For the first time in a half-century, an American-built spacecraft has landed on the moon. The robotic lander was the first U.S. vehicle on the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972, the closing chapter in humanity’s astonishing achievement of sending people to the moon and bringing them all back alive. That is a feat that […]

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U.S. Fears Russia Might Put a Nuclear Weapon in Space

When Russia conducted a series of secret military satellite launches around the time of its invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, American intelligence officials began delving into the mystery of what, exactly, the Russians were doing. Later, spy agencies discovered Russia was working on a new kind of space-based weapon that could threaten the thousands […]

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Elon Musk Says SpaceX Has Switched Incorporation to Texas

The rocket company SpaceX has switched where it is incorporated to Texas from Delaware, its founder, Elon Musk, said on Wednesday, weeks after a Delaware judge voided his pay package at Tesla, another company he owns. The Texas secretary of state, Jane Nelson, issued a certificate confirming that the state has accepted the company’s filing […]

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Live Video: Watch SpaceX Launch Intuitive Machines Nova-C Moon Lander

Another month, another day, another try at the moon. A robotic lunar lander launched in the early morning hours of Thursday, one day after a technical glitch postponed the first launch attempt. If all goes well, it will become the first American spacecraft to set down softly on the moon’s surface since the Apollo 17 […]

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SpaceX to Launch Intuitive Machines Nova-C Moon Lander: How to Watch

Another month, another try at the moon. A robotic lunar lander is scheduled to launch in the early morning hours of Wednesday. If all goes well, it will become the first American spacecraft to set down softly on the moon’s surface since the Apollo 17 moon landing in 1972. It is also the latest private […]

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The Doomsday Clock Keeps Ticking

The Bomb and I go way back. In Seattle, where I grew up in the 1950s and ’60s, it was common wisdom that in the event of nuclear war, we were No. 2 on the target list because Seattle was the home of Boeing, maker of B-52 bombers and Minuteman missiles. In school we had […]

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Fragments of Asteroid With Mystery Origin Are Found Outside Berlin

Scientists have found pieces of a meteorite that fell near Berlin just after midnight on Jan. 21. It is a rare find, from an asteroid that was identified just before it entered Earth’s atmosphere. Only a handful of such events in the recent past have allowed astronomers to trace an incoming rock’s origin in the […]

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It Started as Winter Break. It Ended With a Doomed Moon Mission.

A gaggle of students from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh traveled to Florida last month during their winter break. The students, many of them studying to be engineers and scientists, went there to watch a rocket launch that would send a small 4.8-pound robotic rover that they had helped build on its journey to the […]

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Could a Giant Parasol in Outer Space Help Solve the Climate Crisis?

It’s come to this. With Earth at its hottest point in recorded history, and humans doing far from enough to stop its overheating, a small but growing number of astronomers and physicists are proposing a potential fix that could have leaped from the pages of science fiction: The equivalent of a giant beach umbrella, floating […]

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NASA’s Ingenuity Helicopter Ends Its Mars Mission

Ingenuity, the little Mars helicopter that could, can’t anymore. At least one rotor broke during the robotic flying machine’s most recent flight last week, NASA officials announced on Thursday. Ingenuity remains in contact with its companion, the Perseverance rover, which has been exploring a dried-up river bed for signs of extinct Martian life. Ingenuity will […]

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Japan Explains How It Made an Upside-Down Moon Landing

Japan became the fifth nation to land on the moon on Saturday, but its spacecraft ended up in an awkward position, with its engine nozzle pointed up toward space. By design, the Japanese spacecraft, known as Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM, was supposed to land on its side, a strategy to avoid tipping […]

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Japan Achieves a Soft Lunar Landing, but Its Life on the Moon May Be Short

A Japanese robotic spacecraft successfully set down on the moon on Friday — but its solar panels were not generating power, which will cut the length of time it will be able to operate to a few hours. With this achievement, Japan is now the fifth country to send a spacecraft that made a soft […]

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Astrobotic’s Peregrine Moon Lander Burns Up in Earth’s Atmosphere

A spacecraft that was headed to the surface of the moon has ended up back at Earth instead, burning up in the planet’s atmosphere on Thursday afternoon. Astrobotic Technology of Pittsburgh announced in a post on the social network X that it lost communication with its Peregrine moon lander at 3:50 p.m. Eastern time, which […]

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Live Video: Watch the SpaceX Axiom Astronaut Launch

A private astronaut mission is scheduled to launch on Thursday to the International Space Station. But unlike on earlier such flights, none of the passengers are wealthy space tourists paying their own way to orbit. Instead, three nations — Italy, Sweden and Turkey — are taking advantage of new commercial possibilities to send astronauts from […]

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