The annual Geminid meteor shower is expected to put on quite a show this weekend, peaking on the morning of Monday, December 14. It should be one of the best meteor showers to watch in 2020.

Late last month, one of Iran’s top nuclear scientists, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was unexpectedly killed while driving on a highway with his wife. Immediately after the incident occurred, Iran wasn’t sure how he had been killed. But now, Iran believes it knows what happened, and it’s a bit of an eyebrow-raiser.

Recently it was revealed that Starlink user terminals were costing SpaceX much more to manufacture than what they were selling for. So naturally, people have been curious about what the expensive internals of the device consists of. That’s precisely what an engineer by the name of Ken Keiter set out to discover.

On February 7, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) created the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF). This fund would allow broadband companies to win bids, ultimately funding the United States’ expansion of coverage. Today, SpaceX won some of those bids to expand its Starlink coverage.

Six years ago, on December 3, 2014, Japan launched Hayabusa 2 into space to begin its three-year-long journey to an asteroid named “Ryugu.” Once the asteroid was reached, samples were taken and sent back towards Earth. Now, finally, those samples have successfully arrived.

Back in early March, a small satellite launch company called Astra attempted to launch its first orbital rocket as part of the DARPA Launch Challenge. Launch conditions weren’t cooperative, however, and the launch attempt was scrubbed. Months later, Astra returned to Kodiak, Alaska, for another launch attempt.

The popular sci-fi drama series “For All Mankind” returns to Apple TV+ with season 2 on February 19, 2021. A genius marketing campaign has launched ahead of the season premiere that includes a new mission patch set autographed by the legendary Ronald Moore.

Today, Virgin Galactic has shown off its new non-pressurized flightsuits that its pilots will be wearing in the near future. The flightsuits were designed and created with Technical Spacewear Partner Under Armour.

This week Blue Origin continued to test its BE-7 engine that will be used as part of NASA’s Artemis program. The testing entailed a fourth thrust chamber test, which proved successful and went according to plan. 

In 1985, Coca-Cola was struggling with its brand. The companies biggest competitor, Pepsi, had multiple enormous advertising campaigns that were in full swing, and the public was loving it. It didn’t take long before Pepsi really started to eat away at Coke’s target audience.

Alcohol has a complicated relationship when it comes to NASA and space, according to Supercluster. The stuff is completely banned from consumption in space by NASA, but a surprising amount of it somehow manages to sneak its way into space every year. So, how does all this alcohol end up in places like the International Space Station?

Blue Origin’s chief operating officer, Terry Benedict, will be leaving the company on Friday, December 3. The announcement comes via an email sent out to employees this week from CEO Bob Smith.

On December 1, China’s Chang’e 5 spacecraft successfully made a landing on the Moon, where it was able to collect samples of the lunar surface. This marks the first time in almost 50 years that any lunar samples have been collected.

On December 3, 2014, Hayabusa 2 launched from Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima, Japan, on a six-year-long journey. The mission was to study and collect samples from the asteroid named “Ryugu” before returning to Earth. That return date is a mere four days from today.

A unique space tourism company called Space Perspective just raised $7 million in seed funding. The funding will allow the company to build and test a “space balloon” that will quite literally float tourists up to the edge of space in a capsule called Neptune.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has just signed a $103 million contract with start-up ClearSpace to remove a piece of space debris from orbit. The removal is set to take place sometime in 2025 and will mark the first time that a piece of space debris has been actively removed from orbit.

Sending humans to Mars is a goal that many space companies share and are actively working toward. But even when we manage to get boots on the Martian surface, the challenges are only beginning. One of these crucial challenges is how to create a sustainable source of air to breathe.