Throughout the five months of troubleshooting, Voyager’s ground team continued to receive signals indicating the spacecraft was still alive. But until Saturday, they lacked insight into specific details about the status of Voyager 1. “It’s pretty much just the way we left it,” Spilker said. “We’re still in the initial phases of analyzing all of …
One of the most expensive parts of any rocket launch is getting the rocket off the ground and into space. This part of the mission takes a massive amount of fuel and money to pull off. That’s why projects like NASA’s SLS aren’t sustainable and why many have looked for ways to create propellant-free thrusters …
Plants and animals are dying off at an unprecedented rate on Earth. Some scientists are looking to outer space for a solution. The idea is called a lunar biorepository, a facility that maintains and stores plant and animal cells. But instead of on Earth, this would be on the moon. Why the moon? “There’s …
NASA has confirmed that the object that fell into a Florida home last month was part of a battery pack released from the International Space Station. This extraordinary incident opens a new frontier in space law. NASA, the homeowner, and attorneys are navigating little-used legal codes and intergovernmental agreements to determine who should pay for …
The Victus Haze mission is more complicated than Victus Nox, involving two prime contractors, two spacecraft, and two rocket launches from different spaceports, all timed to occur with short timelines “to keep the demonstration as realistic as possible,” a Space Force spokesperson told Ars. “This demonstration will ultimately prepare the United States Space Force to …
Elon Musk has been talking publicly about his sweeping vision for Mars settlement for nearly eight years now, dating to a speech in Guadalajara, Mexico, in September 2016. This weekend, at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in South Texas, Musk once again took up the mantle of his “making life multiplanetary” cause. Addressing employees at the location …
The arrival of the total solar eclipse in the US has brought with it an impressive array of photographs as well. If you weren’t able to find a spot to view the eclipse in person—or if it was stuck behind uncooperative clouds—you can at least get a sense of its grandeur through these photographs taken …
The third factor is the probability of a lifeless planet producing the observed signal—an equally serious challenge, researchers now realize, that’s tangled up in the problem of unconceived abiotic alternatives. “That’s the probability that we argue you can’t fill in responsibly,” Vickers said. “It could almost range from anything from zero to 1.” Consider the …
Three companies are vying for the opportunity to send their own lunar vehicle to the moon to support NASA’s upcoming Artemis missions. The this week that it’s chosen Intuitive Machines, Lunar Outpost and Venturi Astrolab to develop their lunar terrain vehicles (LTV) in a feasibility study over the next year. After that, only one is …
In other anecdotes, onlookers have reported birds that stop singing, crickets that stopped chirping, or bees that return to their hive, reduce their foraging, or suspend their flight during total darkness. But there are also studies that deny that some of these behaviors occur or can be attributed to the eclipse. Therefore, NASA scientists plan …