space Archives | Page 6 of 19

China’s Chang’e-6 Successfully Landed on the Moon’s Elusive Dark Side — Here’s What Will Happen Next

— Xinhua News/CNSA China’s Chang’e-6 mission to the far side of the Moon has hit the ground running. On Saturday, the latest of the Chang’e lunar fleet landed on the side of the Moon we cannot see from Earth. The mission aims to collect about four and a half pounds of material, and then will […]

How The Boeing Starliner Crew Have Kept Cool Heads In Quarantine

— NASA/Cory S. Huston For a long 26 days, the Boeing Starliner flight, what would be the first dissimilar contingency spacecraft for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, has been put on pause. And while space fans attempted to prognosticate while they bit fingernails and engineers checked and rechecked helium and oxygen leaks, two crucial people waited […]

This Solar Probe Just Helped To Trace The Origins Of Space Weather

The European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter recently shed some new light on what causes space weather. The constantly-shifting lines of the Sun’s magnetic field do strange things to the super-heated plasma at the Sun’s surface, causing cool, dark patches called sunspots, dark areas with one-way magnetic lines called coronal holes, and high arcs of glowing […]

A New NASA Image Captures A Trio Of Stars In A Cosmic Nursery

— NASA This week, NASA published an enchanting image of a trio of stars emerging from the clouds of dust and gas from which they formed. This young trio shows what amounts to a cosmic nursery — young stars emerging from the gaseous clouds that likely created them. NASA found that HP Tau, the star […]

The Sun Is Experiencing a ‘Potentially Historic’ Eruption — With Possible Serious Consequences for Earth

Charged particles are spilling out of the Sun — and there may be some serious consequences for Earth. These high-energy showers will first arrive on Friday, and continue until Sunday. At least seven expulsions, called coronal mass ejections, are expected to come our way then. As the particles strike our magnetic field and tickle the […]

What Actually Happened to the Boeing Rocket Last Night?

— Anadolu/Anadolu/Getty Images The Boeing Starliner spacecraft was set to launch its first crew toward the International Space Station on Monday night. But the company behind the Atlas V rocket that would have gotten them into space, United Launch Alliance (ULA), called it off. This decision, called a scrub, was made because a rocket valve […]

Eta Aquarids: This Spring’s Best Meteor Shower Is Peaking and You Cannot Miss It

— Diana Robinson Photography/Moment/Getty Images If you’ve ever wanted to watch stray bits of debris from Halley’s Comet pummel Earth’s upper atmosphere, this week is your chance. The Eta Aquarid Meteor shower will be at its busiest now through May 10, with the show peaking in early predawn hours of May 5. Earth is crossing […]

‘Starfield’ is Finally Addressing Critiques of Its Boring, Empty Planets

— Bethesda Game Studios On the heels of the somewhat contentious release of Fallout 4’s Next-Gen update, Bethesda Game Studios announced that some long-awaited quality-of-life features are finally being added to their space-faring role-playing game. Starfield’s fourth major update will add a wave of new features according to a video update from Bethesda, including new […]

Boeing Starliner Is Just Days Away From Its First Human Test Flight

— Anadolu/Anadolu/Getty Images The Boeing Starliner is less than a week away from its critical Crew Flight Test. NASA astronauts Sunita “Suni” Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore will be the first humans to fly aboard the low-Earth orbit spacecraft. Their flight will take off as early as Monday, May 6 at 10:34 p.m. Eastern from […]

Voyager 1 Just Sent Its First Coherent Message Back to NASA In Months

— NASA/JPL After 5 months of electronic aphasia, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft can communicate intelligibly again, thanks to a clever programming fix from its engineers. The Voyager 1 team received a clear message about the spacecraft’s status on April 20, and they expect to have science data flowing again in the next few weeks. This […]