Space Explored

After years of delays and several frustrating launch attempts, Artemis 1 has launched and is on its way to the Moon. Finally, the planets aligned for NASA and the SLS rocket to take flight and wow onlookers who have waited for this moment for a very long time.

It seems to be a news story that takes place every couple of years, but early Saturday morning, sonic booms were heard across Florida Space Coast. Those rather iconic booms could only mean one thing, the arrival of NASA’s Space Shuttle or the Space Force’s classified X37-B spaceplane. Since all of NASA’s shuttles have been collecting dust in museums for the past decade, it must be that pesky X37-B.

It sounds like SpaceX’s Starship program is getting another leadership change, and this time it’s a big one. SpaceX employee number 11, Gwynne Shotwell, the President and COO of the company, will now lead its development.

Humanity has populated Mars with a variety of robots over the years. From rovers to landers to orbiting spacecraft, there’s been a lot – and it can be overwhelming. Read on to see all the missions still active on and around Mars today.

UFOs, which are more commonly referred to as UAPs these days, have been in the media quite a bit since 2017. This is due to a piece written by the New York Times, which was credited with starting up the UFO curiosity machine for the first time in decades. Since then, the stigma that has notoriously surrounded the topic has finally begun to wane, and various governments have become publically interested in the subject.

Early November 10, ULA launched an Atlas V from Space Launch Complex 3 at Vandenberg Space Force Station. The mission carried JPSS-2 and an inflatable decelerator to prove the systems to and gather data on this unique type of heat shield.

Early this morning, Northrop Grumman’s SS Sally Ride Cygnus spacecraft arrived at the International Space Station carrying 8,200 pounds of supplies for the seven crewmembers. However, the Cygnus is missing one of its now iconic circular solar panels due to an unknown failure.

Black holes are arguably the most fascinating yet violent objects in the known universe, and a Harvard astrophysicist just discovered the closest one to Earth yet. But no need to panic, as even this black hole is still 1,600 light-years away and dormant, at least for now.

Two weeks ago, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk officially took control of Twitter, an app you probably used to get to this article. We’ve seen Musk start new companies since creating SpaceX, but this is the first significant company he has taken control of since Tesla in 2004. So what does this new addition to the Elon portfolio mean for SpaceX?

Currently, we’re at L-6 days to the next launch attempt of NASA’s maiden flight of the Space Launch System (SLS) with the Orion spacecraft on the Artemis 1 mission. A critical test flight for the launch systems, however, Florida is yet again under threat from another tropical storm.

Early tomorrow morning, people around the globe will have the opportunity to view one of the most spectacular events in the sky, a total lunar eclipse. Here’s a rundown of how to watch this event and why total lunar eclipses are often referred to as “blood moons.”

SpaceX’s high-speed satellite internet service, Starlink, has changed a great deal from when it first came out. Starlink has seen reduced real-world speeds for a while as a result of the large number of customers, but now Starlink has changed its expected download speeds to much lower targets. Additionally, the company has introduced soft data-caps and the ability to pay for more priority access.

Things have pretty quiet since SpaceX acquired the IOT company Swarm last year. SpaceX’s exact plans for the company weren’t clear and the company continued operating (now with basically free launch cost), but the company’s low-speed IOT focused satellite network seemed like a good companion to Starlink. Now, the Starlink website has added a new IOT link to the Swarm website, where customers can buy an evaluation kit, modem, or asset tracker.

YouTuber William Osman has created all sorts of wacky inventions – from building his own X-Ray machine to “almost ruining” Mr. Beast’s popular Squid Game video with indicators for when a player is knocked out. This time around, he followed a number of viewer suggestions to test various ways to prevent cracked screens on dropped cellphones. These ranged from the more tame drone motors, springs, and parachutes to (the totally inadvisable – don’t try this at home) airbags and rocket motors.

Three years after its last flight, SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy has returned to flight on this cloudy Florida morning. The primary payload of this launch is the classified USSF-44 satellite, with two other satellites co-manifested. The launch occurred on November 1 at 9:41 a.m. Eastern Time, successfully delivering the satellites to their targeted geosynchronous orbit.

Last year, on December 24, NASA’s InSight lander detected a magnitude 4 marsquake, which initially didn’t appear to be anything out of the ordinary. Only later did NASA learn that this particular marsquake was quite remarkable, caused by one of the largest meteoroid strikes that NASA has ever seen on Mars.

According to a report from The Information, SpaceX could be pushing its Starship production too fast, with safety concerns reported by employees during a recent full stack test. All this under the eyes of Starlink’s chief, now unofficially running the program.

Sometimes it’s good to be a competitor, and sometimes it’s nice to be a launch provider. SpaceX gets to be both and profit off its competitors. Amazon Senior Vice President Dave Limp said the company is also open to SpaceX’s capabilities to launch its Project Kuiper satellites.

When spacecraft reenter, they need a heat shield to protect them from the immense friction and heat of speeding through the atmosphere. Usually, these are rigid structures, but ULA plans to use an inflatable heat shield to protect the engines of their Vulcan rocket and recover them for reuse. They’ll be testing out that type of heat shield next month.

Talk about dedication to your job! While the average employee only stays at their company for four years, Edward Stone stuck around for 50. On Tuesday, he finally retired from JPL, where he served as Voyager’s Project Scientist.

One of the options Starlink customers have been waiting on, for quite a while, is the ability to use Starlink terminals while in motion. With Starlink Maritime the company released the ability to use the high-speed internet while in motion out at sea, but at last, there is an official option for customers who want to mount a Starlink terminal on top of their RV or other vehicles for in-motion use.