China Selects New Space Missions Including Lunar Far Side Astronomy And Terrestrial Exoplanet Survey...

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HELSINKI — The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) is backing a new suite of diverse, cutting edge missions, advancing its ambitious agenda in space science.

The initiatives—spanning lunar farside astronomy, astrophysics, exoplanets and heliophysics—aim to place China at the forefront of astronomical research and space exploration. Wang Chi, director of the National Space Science Center (NSSC) under CAS, revealed the missions at the annual Zhongguancun Forum meeting April 27.

Selected missions include Discovering the Sky at the Longest Wavelength (DSL), the Enhanced X-ray Timing and Polarimetry (eXTP) mission, and the ExoEarth Survey, an exoplanet-hunting spacecraft. Another mission will see a spacecraft sent to observe the solar poles. The Taiji mission will use three satellites to detect gravitational waves.

The missions are separate from the China National Space Administration's planetary and lunar exploration programs. These are known as Tianwen and Chang'e respectively.

The eXTP mission will be a powerful X-ray observatory to monitor the sky and enable multi-messenger studies for gravitational waves and neutrino sources. It will also study the universe under extreme states of matter density, gravity and magnetism.

DSL will consist of an array of 10 small satellites sent into lunar orbit. The nine spacecraft and one mother spacecraft will use the moon as a shield against Earthly electromagnetic interference to enable it to pick up faint, ultra-long wave signals from the early universe.

The ExoEarth Survey, likely a mission also referred to as "Earth 2.0," or ET, will use the transit, photometry and microlensing methods to search for terrestrial planets and rogue planets. The selected solar mission appears to refer to the previously proposed Solar Polar-orbit Observatory (SPO). This aims to study poles of the Sun, orbiting at an inclination of greater than 80 degrees with respect to the plane of the ecliptic.

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He Hoped To Be The First Black Astronaut In Space, But Never Made It. Now 90, He's Going.

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Dwight was selected by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to enter an Air Force training program known as the path to NASA's Astronaut Corps.

When he got the letter in 1961 offering him the opportunity to be the first Black astronaut, "I thought these dudes were crazy," Dwight told national correspondent Jericka Duncan in 2022.

"So, all these White folks that I'm dealing with, I mean, my peers, the other guys that were astronaut candidates and the leadership was just horrified at the idea of my coming down to Edwards and the president appointing me to the position," Dwight said.

His dream of going to space fell by the wayside for more than 60 years. But Dwight has been selected as one of the six civilians to travel to the edge of space on the next Blue Origin flight in June.

During the first commercial flight, aviation pioneer Wally Funk became the oldest person to travel to space at age 82. At 90 years old, Shatner took the title of the oldest person in space.

The space trip takes the civilians about 62 miles away from Earth and into the atmosphere for a few minutes of weightlessness and a view of space and Earth.

The other five people on the upcoming Blue Origin flight are venture capitalist Mason Angel, French brewery founder Sylvain Chiron, software engineer Kenneth L. Hess, retired CPA Carol Schaller and pilot and aviator Gopi Thotakura.

NASA Crew Announced For Simulated Mars Mission Next Month

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Boeing's Starliner spacecraft will not fly private missions yet, officials say | Space

The spacecraft's program manager, Mark Nappi, told reporters Thursday (April 25) the company is very focused on flying the first Starliner mission for NASA with astronauts on board. That mission, Crew Flight Test (CFT), will see NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams rocket to space aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket no earlier than May 6.

"It [CFT] really is all of our attention at this point," Nappi said during a telephone press conference from the launch area at NASA's Kennedy Space Center near Orlando. After that, Boeing will make sure it has enough spacecraft manufactured for future NASA astronaut flights, which are expected to run to six or seven.

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'I'm sure we'll find things out': NASA astronauts fly to launch site for 1st crewed Boeing Starliner mission to ISS on...

The first Starliner crew is ready to fly on May 6, the team told reporters upon arriving at the launch site. This will mark the spacecraft's debut mission with humans on board.

The two NASA astronauts to fly aboard Boeing Starliner , commander Barry "Butch" Wilmore and pilot Suni Williams, arrived at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) near Orlando, Florida today (April 25) for their historic launch. Aside from being the first humans to fly on Starliner, the astronauts (both former U.S. Navy test pilots) will also be the first people to ride on board the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket.

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Related: Tour the mock Mars habitat where 4 NASA analog astronauts will spend the next year (video)

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com.

Meredith is a regional Murrow award-winning Certified Broadcast Meteorologist and science/space correspondent. She most recently was a Freelance Meteorologist for NY 1 in New York City ⁘ the 19 First Alert Weather Team in Cleveland. A self-described "Rocket Girl," Meredith's personal and professional work has drawn recognition over the last decade, including the inaugural Valparaiso University Alumni Association First Decade Achievement Award, two special reports in News 12's Climate Special "Saving Our Shores" that won a Regional Edward R. Murrow Award, multiple Fair Media Council Folio ⁘ Press Club of Long Island awards for meteorology ⁘ reporting, and a Long Island Business News ⁘ NYC TV Week "40 Under 40" Award.

China Returns To The Moon, SpaceX Keeps Up High Launch Cadence - NASASpaceFlight.Com

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This week, China returns to the Moon with the Chang'e-6 mission, making the first-ever attempt to collect samples from a site on the far side, near the lunar South Pole.

SpaceX also plans to keep up its high cadence with the launch of the long-delayed WorldView Legion satellites from Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) at the Vandenberg Space Force Base (VSFB) in California. Additionally, two further Starlink missions are scheduled to launch this week, with the second Starlink mission possibly completing a record-breaking sub-three-day turnaround for Vandenberg.

Lastly, no launch permit was issued for Gilmour Space's Eris 1 orbital rocket, previously expected to make its maiden flight on May 4, this launch is now on hold.

Originally scheduled to launch from SLC-4E at VSFB on April 17, a Falcon 9 was set to carry two satellites massing a total of 1,500 kilograms into a Sun-synchronous orbit. This first launch attempt was postponed the day before launch and rescheduled for Wednesday, April 24, before being postponed again. SpaceX has not commented on the reason for the delays, but liftoff is now scheduled for Wednesday, May 2, at 11:30 AM PDT (18:30 UTC), at the start of a 54-minute launch window. The booster, which has yet to be confirmed, is expected to return to land on the pad at Landing Zone 4 located around 400 meters away from the launch pad.

The WorldView Legion satellite constellation is Maxar Technologies' next-generation constellation of Earth observation satellites, designed and built in-house at the company's facilities in Palo Alto and San Jose, California. DigitalGlobe, which was later taken over by Maxar, first announced its selection of SpaceX as the launch provider in 2018 when the satellites were initially anticipated to launch in two blocks of six. Hardware-based delays, as well as the complexity of the technology, have caused several setbacks. The planned constellation will now consist of six satellites in total that will be launched in pairs and will orbit in polar and mid-inclination orbits.

Laser On NASA's Psyche Asteroid Probe Beams Data From 140 Million Miles Away

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Late last year, NASA scientists pressed start on a highly anticipated space mission. Basically, they launched a spacecraft toward an asteroid that could very well be made entirely of metal, a composition that appears to be a rarity ⁘ at least, in our solar system's vicinity. The robotic adventurer is called Psyche, and its namesake is the giant rock that guides its journey: 16 Psyche.

Not only did it transmit data to Earth from Psyche's location at the time, about 140 million miles (225 million kilometers) away ⁘ a record-breaking distance larger than the gap between our planet and the sun ⁘ but it also managed to beam back information gleaned straight from the spacecraft. This means that the DSOC transceiver actually interfaced with Psyche's radio transmitter and sent back concrete engineering data contained within the craft.

Still, this duplicated-data achievement, in itself, is a big deal for the experiment; though DSOC has been making headlines lately for various other milestones, there's been a caveat. For instance, in November of last year when it fired data back to Earth from 10 million miles (16 million km) away, and recently during a "turnaround test" in which scientists pinged the experiment with content, then got that content to be pinged back, DSOC wasn't beaming back any "real" information. It was pre-loaded test data that could be pulled out on command.

"We'd been sending test and diagnostic data in our downlinks from Psyche," Srinivasan said. "This represents a significant milestone for the project by showing how optical communications can interface with a spacecraft⁘s radio frequency comms system."

And now, if you're wondering about how the rate tests are going for DSOC, we'll have to get into the cat video.

And third, one part of the data was a stunning video of Taters . Who is Taters, you ask? Well, a sweet little orange Tabby cat, of course. (It would be an orange cat, wouldn't it?) This is also probably a good time to mention some of that recent "turnaround test" data involved pet pics as well.

NASA Hubble Space Telescope Suspends Science Due To Glitch

The telescope went into safe mode on April 23. Safe mode is a protective mode that Hubble enters when it encounters a technical problem. It gives NASA a chance to diagnose and work on the glitch, but it also means Hubble isn't sending back any new science data. There is some good news, though. "Hubble's instruments are stable, and the telescope is in good health," the agency said.

The gyros help Hubble point in the right direction. Three of Hubble's six gyroscopes are operational, but one of those three gave faulty readings that triggered the safe mode. The same gyro previously sent the telescope into safe mode in November, so it's a lingering problem. "The team is currently working to identify potential solutions," NASA said. "If necessary, the spacecraft can be re-configured to operate with only one gyro, with the other remaining gyro placed in reserve."

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Mirrors In Space Could Boost Solar Power Production On Earth

LONDON ⁘ A California-based startup wants to launch a constellation of orbiting mirrors, which will beam sunlight to solar power plants to boost renewable electricity production after dark. A prototype light-reflecting satellite could make its way to orbit next year.

Ben Nowack, the founder and CEO of Reflect Orbital, introduced the company's plans at the International Conference on Energy from Space, held here last week.

Reflect Orbital envisions a constellation of 57 small satellites orbiting Earth in a formation in sun-synchronous polar orbit, at an altitude of 370 miles (600 kilometers). In that orbit, the satellites would circle the planet from pole to pole while the planet rotates underneath them. The satellites would fly over each spot on Earth at the same time of the day, making two passes per 24 hours. Combined, the 57 satellites would provide an additional 30 minutes of sunshine to the power plants, at the time when energy is most needed, Nowack said.

Related: Space-based solar power may be one step closer to reality, thanks to this key test (video)

"It's very easy to replace the first 1% of the energy grid with renewables," said Nowack. "It's very hard to replace the last 1%. That is the energy that you need on a day that is not windy but rainy."

"We want to make it as easy as possible ⁘ like, log into a website, tell us your GPS coordinates and we get you some sunlight after dark," said Nowack.

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Humanoid Robots Are Learning To Fall Well

The savvy marketers at Boston Dynamics produced two major robotics news cycles last week. The larger of the two was, naturally, the electric Atlas announcement . As I write this, the sub-40 second video is steadily approaching five million views. A day prior, the company tugged at the community's heart strings when it announced that the original hydraulic Atlas was being put out to pasture , a decade after its introduction.

The accompanying video was a celebration of the older Atlas' journey from DARPA research project to an impressively nimble bipedal 'bot. A minute in, however, the tone shifts. Ultimately, "Farewell to Atlas" is as much a celebration as it is a blooper reel. It's a welcome reminder that for every time the robot sticks the landing on video there are dozens of slips, falls and sputters.

The company's newly appointed CTO, Pras Velagapudi, recently told me that seeing robots fall on the job at this stage is actually a good thing. ⁘When a robot is actually out in the world doing real things, unexpected things are going to happen,⁘ he notes. ⁘You're going to see some falls, but that's part of learning to run a really long time in real-world environments. It's expected, and it's a sign that you're not staging things.⁘

The subject of falling also came up when I spoke with Boston Dynamics CEO Robert Playter ahead of the electric Atlas' launch. Notably, the short video begins with the robot in a prone position. The way the robot's legs arc around is quite novel, allowing the system to stand up from a completely flat position. At first glance, it almost feels as though the company is showing off, using the flashy move simply as a method to showcase the extremely robust custom-built actuators.

"There will be very practical uses for that," Playter told me. "Robots are going to fall. You'd better be able to get up from prone." He adds that the ability to get up from a prone position may also be useful for charging purposes.

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Mystery Planet? New Evidence Suggests Huge 9th Planet In Solar System

Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have found new evidence that further suggests there is a ninth planet in our solar system.⁘

Nicknamed ⁘Planet Nine,⁘ researchers said that the most recent data shows something big is able to pull objects from outer space toward our sun and these objects occasionally cross Neptune⁘s line of orbit.⁘

The most plausible explanation, according to some researchers, is that a planet is creating these interferences.⁘

⁘Without Planet Nine, these objects can't be pushed inward past Neptune very often,⁘ Konstantin Batygin, lead author of the study and astronomer at Caltech, told FOX TV Stations.⁘

Below, the first panel shows a simulation with Planet Nine included. What⁘s more, these simulations actually align with what was observed over long-period orbits that cross Neptune⁘s path, Batygin explained.⁘

The Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile will be tasked with surveying the skies and the hope is that it will accelerate the ability to detect distant objects in our solar system, and that includes Planet Nine.⁘

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During The Solar System's Chaotic Era, Jupiter May Have Helped Form Earth's Moon

It would appear that the so-called "great instability" event that wreaked chaos among the planets, sending the gas giants careening through space until they settled into the orbits we know today, occurred between 60 and 100 million years after the birth of the solar system . This is the conclusion of some careful scientific detective work that has connected a type of meteorite to an asteroid that was once pushed around by those marauding planets.

Thanks to studies of the compositions and locations of various types of asteroids and comets , scientists know the aforementioned carnage occurred early in the history of the solar system. Still, there are some puzzles yet to be solved when it comes to how exactly everything went down.

For instance, scientists are aware that the objects in the solar system we see today, including Earth, formed around the sun from a disk of gas and dust. However, some of those objects, namely asteroids and comets, appear to consist of material that was not present in the disk ⁘ at least, the material shouldn't have been present in the locations those objects currently find themselves in. Instead, it'd make more sense for these items to have formed closer to the sun before being scattered farther afield. If Jupiter and the other giant planets migrated from where they formed , maybe asteroids and comets could've as well.

"The idea of this orbital instability is now well established in the planetary community, however the time at which this instability occurred is still a matter of debate," planetary scientist Chrysa Avdellidou of the University of Leicester told Space.com.

The team focused on a kind of meteorite called an EL enstatite chondrite, which has a low iron abundance and is very similar in composition and isotopic ratio to the material that formed Earth. This tells scientists that Earth and EL chondrites likely condensed out of the same part of the planet-forming disk.

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Did UFO Steal Nuclear Technology From U.S. Facility?

Public and government interest in the existence of UFOs has skyrocketed in the past year following testimony from former government officials about the existence of what are being called Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, or UAP.

The Pentagon has confirmed the existence of a government database with at least 800 reports of "anomalous" objects , launching its All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) in July 2022 to investigate what we know about mysterious sightings in the sky.

One video posted on X, formerly Twitter , appeared to have caught such a sighting, showing a flying object in the desert, supposedly interfering with a U.S. nuclear tech site.

The post included a video of what appeared to be a metallic object floating in the desert, attracting another metallic object toward it before it zoomed into the air and out of the shot.

The original video was published four years ago on the YouTube channel Alien Planet, dedicated to computer-generated alien and UFO sightings.

However, the instability of the frame doesn't increase when it's zoomed in. Moreover, the camera abruptly stabilizes between the distant and zoomed-in shots. These inconsistencies indicate that the video was made to make it look like it was filmed when it wasn't.

A clearer indication of its artificiality comes later in the video when the camera magnifies the object in the distance. It is hanging exactly above a cropping of rocks, when another object floats up from behind the same rocks.

The two objects have far clearer fidelity compared to the rocks, despite seemingly being at the same distance, strongly hinting they were painted or added into the frame.

The video posted on X appears to help mask these visual inconsistencies by lowering the quality of the video, slowing it down, and moving the shot around artificially, making it harder to see the object on the screen.

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NASA Deploys New Solar Sail Technology As 80-Square-Meter Sail Unfurls In Space

Propulsion is always a big deal when it comes to space missions. Every gram counts when going up into space, so the more energy-dense your fuel is the better. You also usually can't refuel once you are out there. An alternative solution, which doesn't have this problem, is using a solar sail .

By taking advantage of the radiation pressure from sunlight, one can easily propel a spacecraft. This has been demonstrated several times but the technology still has challenges to overcome. So NASA is testing a new design dubbed the Advanced Composite Solar Sail System. It was deployed in orbit just a few days ago after flying on a Rocket Lab launch.

To be effective, the deployed sails and booms need to be as light as possible. For this new experiment, NASA has developed new composite materials that are not just lighter but also stiffer than previous approaches to solar sails.

"Booms have tended to be either heavy and metallic or made of lightweight composite with a bulky design – neither of which work well for today's small spacecraft. Solar sails need very large, stable, and lightweight booms that can fold down compactly," Keats Wilkie, the mission's principal investigator at NASA's Langley Research Center, said in a statement .

"This sail's booms are tube-shaped and can be squashed flat and rolled like a tape measure into a small package while offering all the advantages of composite materials, like less bending and flexing during temperature changes."

The fully deployed sails measure 80 square meters (860 square feet) or roughly the area of six parking spots. But they pack really tightly and move around an air fryer-sized CubeSat. They will orbit on a Sun-synchronous orbit about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) above the Earth's surface.

"Seven meters of the deployable booms can roll up into a shape that fits in your hand," said Alan Rhodes, the mission's lead systems engineer at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley. "The hope is that the new technologies verified on this spacecraft will inspire others to use them in ways we haven't even considered."

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Are There Aliens On… K2-18b? Discovery Of Planet Twice As Big As Earth Emitting Gas 'Only Produced By...

Planet K2-18b – which is more than twice as big as Earth and 120 light-years away – sits within the habitable zone of its star in the Leo constellation.  

Now, to confirm the finding, the James Webb Space Telescope will undertake hours of observations of the planet on Friday.  

However, space fans will have to wait several months for the results to be authenticated and published.

Investigations of planet K2-18b are being led by Dr Nikku Madhusudhan, an astrophysicist at the University of Cambridge. 

He's called it a 'hycean' world – a relatively new term he coined for a rocky planet with a hydrogen-rich atmosphere and oceans of water.

'If we do detect DMS [on K2-18b] it does put it basically at the top for potential signs of habitability,' he told the Times . 

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He Left For A Space Mission. When He Returned, His Whole Country Was Gone.

Russian astronaut Sergei Krikalev had to spend 312 days extra in space. What he saw after returning to Earth left him stunned.

Sergei Krikalev, a Russian cosmonaut, was all set to be deployed to the Mir space station on a Soyuz spacecraft in 1991. Set against the backdrop of the Soviet Union's dissolution, the exploratory mission turned out to be a nightmare for the cosmonaut. Initially, marked as a five-month mission, Sergei returned to a changed Earth after almost a year.

The Russian cosmonaut's prolonged stay put financial pressure on the country. To arrange funds, Russia decided to offer space station vacations to Western countries. With the rising talk of selling Mir, concerns sparked among the crew members, but they stayed because had they left Mir, it would have meant the end of the Space Station.

In March 1992, Krikalev finally received the news that he would be replaced and could return to Earth. He landed near Arkalyk, in the independent Republic of Kazakhstan. By the time he landed, his home Leningrad had become St Petersburg of the Russian State.

What was initially assigned as a five-month space routine had unfortunately extended to almost a year for Krikalev, who spent 312 days away from Earth, which took a toll on his health. Upon returning home, he was diagnosed with signs of heavy damage to his physical health, including muscle and bone weakening. But the truly tragic part of Krikalev's story is that he went on to become the last citizen of the Soviet Union and was unable to return to his original home of Leningrad, which is now known as St.Petersburg. Still, his dedication to staying at the Mir station in the face of adversity and his commitment to the Soviet space program displayed true patriotism and professionalism.

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NASA Shares Updated Render Of The Cargo Starship Variant

NASA shared updated renders of the SpaceX and Blue Origin cargo landers that will bring rovers and other equipment to the Moon.

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Lego Reveals NASA Artemis Rocket, Milky Way Galaxy Sets Coming In May

Though the moon can sometimes seem like a distant destination for a rocket, the second newly-announced Lego kit takes in a much wider view of deep space.

The Lego Art The Milky Way Galaxy set (no. 31212; $199.99 / ⁘199.99 / ⁘169.99) creates a colorful, dimensional map of our home galaxy, spanning more than 620,000,000,000,000,000 miles (1,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilometers or about 100,000 light years) in a 25.5-inch-wide (65-centimeter) mosaic.

Lego's gorgeous recreation of our cosmic neighborhood features many galactic landmarks such as the Trappist-1 system, the Pleiades star cluster, the Crab Nebula and the Pillars of Creation.

In addition to the astronomical sights, the mosaic also includes a "You are here" sign placed where our solar system is located and what looks to be a spacecraft (though only four probes have just barely left our solar system, with a fifth on its way).

Designed to be hung on a wall, the Milky Way Galaxy set is built up from five different panels, each with its own instructions, so it can be assembled by an individual or as a group activity. Builders can also access (via a QR code) a podcast specially recorded for this set featuring Lego Group host Jack Gardner Vaa; science communicators Camille "Galactic Gal" Bergin and University of Leicester chancellor Maggie Aderin-Pocock; and Lego Group designer Adam Vaughan.

The Space Launch System and Milky Way will be available to order for members of Lego Insiders, the company's loyalty program, on May 15. The sets will then be released for sale to all both online and at Lego Stores beginning on May 18.

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com.

Robert Pearlman is a space historian, journalist and the founder and editor of collectSPACE.com , an online publication and community devoted to space history with a particular focus on how and where space exploration intersects with pop culture. Pearlman is also a contributing writer for Space.com and co-author of "Space Stations: The Art, Science, and Reality of Working in Space⁘ published by Smithsonian Books in 2018. He previously developed online content for the National Space Society and Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin, helped establish the space tourism company Space Adventures and currently serves on the History Committee of the American Astronautical Society, the advisory committee for The Mars Generation and leadership board of For All Moonkind. In 2009, he was inducted into the U.S. Space Camp Hall of Fame in Huntsville, Alabama. In 2021, he was honored by the American Astronautical Society with the Ordway Award for Sustained Excellence in Spaceflight History.

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Companies Offer Proposals For Apophis Asteroid Missions

WASHINGTON — Companies ranging from Blue Origin to a startup are proposing concepts for missions to visit an asteroid before it makes a very close flyby of Earth in five years.

The asteroid Apophis, about 350 meters across, will pass closer to the Earth than geostationary orbit on April 13, 2029, a flyby that scientists say happens only once every thousand years for an asteroid of that size. There is zero chance that the asteroid will hit Earth either in the 2029 flyby or subsequent flybys into the next century, but the close approach is of scientific interest.

NASA has already agreed to send one mission to Apophis, using the main spacecraft for the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission. That mission, rechristened OSIRIS-APEX , will rendezvous with Apophis shortly after the asteroid's 2029 flyby.

Scientists, though, are interested in sending additional missions to Apophis, particularly those that would fly by or orbit the asteroid before the flyby so that researchers can better the understand what impact tidal forces from the flyby might have on the asteroid. Several such mission concepts were discussed during an April 22–23 workshop at a European Space Agency center in The Netherlands.

A "very preliminary and very conservative" mission profile he presented showed the Blue Ring mission launching in October 2027 — ironically on a Falcon 9 and not the company's own New Glenn vehicle — arriving at Apophis in January 2029 carrying two metric tons of payload. "We haven't optimized this yet. We can do better," he said, including using New Glenn to launch the mission.

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Meadors Named Director Of Arkansas Space Grant Consortium - News

The University of Arkansas at Little Rock is happy to announce Dr. Constance Meadors as the new director of the Arkansas Space Grant Consortium (ASGC) and NASA Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) program.

"I am only the third director since the Arkansas Space Grant Consortium began in 1991," she said. "I think it's a wonderful opportunity. My NASA experience started here at UA Little Rock conducting hybrid rocket research as a graduate student. Immediately upon entering the program, I was identified as the recipient of a NASA fellowship. That was the first time I became involved in NASA, and it was beyond anything I imagined as a young African American female from a small town. It feels like I have come full circle in coming back to the place where it all started."

ASGC partners with 17 four-year universities and colleges across Arkansas, dedicated to advancing space science education, research, and public outreach. The ASGC recently partnered with six higher education institutions in Arkansas to provide funding and solar eclipse glasses for free STEM festivals where the public could watch the solar eclipse and learn about STEM activities in Arkansas. ASGC employees spent April 8 at Winthrop Rockefeller Institute, where NASA scientists, partnering researchers, and citizen scientists spent the day conducting research experiments for the total solar eclipse.

"This was ground zero for NASA research in Arkansas," Meadors said. "We had research teams launching balloons, and we completed several workshops, including one workshop where we taught citizen scientists how to use their phones to collect data during the eclipse. We had scientists join us from Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, and North and South Carolina."

Meadors joined UA Little Rock in 2023 as the associate director of ASGC, and she brings a diverse wealth of space research and NASA experience. In the Office of STEM Engagement, she served as the first Minority Serving Institution (MSI) STEM Engagement Liaison-Faculty Fellow for NASA Intergovernmental Personnel Assignees (IPA). The NASA EPSCoR advisory council was established and led by her.

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Watch A Hotspot Orbit Our Galaxy's Black Hole - Sky ⁘ Telescope

Astronomers have used artificial intelligence to reconstruct a 3D video that shows a hot pocket of gas orbiting a stone's throw away from our galaxy's central black hole.

For all its "supermassive" status, our resident behemoth, dubbed Sgr A*, is quiet as such black holes go. Perhaps due to strong magnetic fields that constrict its diet, it only picks at the gaseous buffet around it. Even so, it emits minor flares up to several times a day at X-ray, infrared, and radio wavelengths.

These flares were a nuisance to the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) team, which produced an image of Sgr A*'s dark silhouette, based off of data collected in 2017. Now, Aviad Levis (Caltech) and collaborators, including several members of the EHT team, have utilized some of this 2017 data for a new project: following the motion of a flaring hotspot in the tumultuous gas flowing around the black hole.

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), high in the Atacama Desert in Chile, was imaging Sgr A* on April 11, 2017, as part of the EHT project. While data taken earlier in the month was ultimately used for the EHT image, because the black hole was quieter then, the radio-wave data collected on April 11th was interesting in its own right, as it coincided with an X-ray flare.

However, while the combined EHT data revealed an exquisitely high-resolution image of Sgr A*, the ALMA data taken alone is 100,000 times fuzzier. Basically, all of the information that the team was interested in was packed into a single pixel.

The researchers started with the idea that flares come from hotspots within gas flowing around the central maw. Magnetic fields snap-crackle-popping very close to the black hole can heat and energize this gas.

If a flare comes from such a hotspot, then information about the flare's origin is encoded in the pixel's changing brightness: Gas flowing into the black hole won't change much over a few hours, but hot pockets of gas will shear out and fade more quickly. The radio waves' polarization , which tells us at what angle the light waves are oscillating, is also expected to be higher when the light is coming from a hot bubble of plasma.

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Sentient Humanoid’ Robots As Tesla Flounders

If ever there was a way to distract from Tesla's lackluster corporate results on Tuesday, it was this: CEO Elon Musk declared during the company's earnings call that he hopes to sell "sentient humanoid" robots by the end of next year.

Before then, the robots known as "Optimus" will likely be used at Tesla's factories sometime this year, he said. "I think Optimus will be more valuable than everything else [at Tesla] combined," Musk boasted. "If you've got a sentient humanoid that is able to navigate reality and do tasks…there is no meaningful limit to the size of the economy."

Before the dawn of its not-yet-proven humanoid robot era, Tesla faces big financial issues in the short term. During the first quarter of the year, its profits tanked 55 percent—to $1.1 billion—the company announced Tuesday. Meanwhile, its revenue sank 9 percent, to $21.3 billion. Earlier this month, the carmaker announced that it would lay off 10 percent of its staff in an effort to shore up its finances.

Investors evidently thought the company's results would be even worse on Tuesday, as Tesla's stock rose more than 10 percent in after-hours trading.

On the earnings call, Musk pressed the case for electric vehicles despite industry headwinds, arguing that gas-powered cars without autonomous capabilities will one day be viewed the same way horse-drawn carriages are today.

He also detailed Tesla's plans to launch an army of robotaxis; within a decade, he forecasted, the company will have tens of millions of vehicles in operation that it may be able to utilize to that end. It's worth noting, however, that Musk has previously made outlandish predictions about company timelines that did not pan out.

The billionaire insists that he is fully focused on the carmaker, despite the headaches at X. Considering his proposed pay package, investors will need to believe him.

This month, the company said it will ask shareholders to vote on Musk's unprecedented compensation agreement , which is worth about $50 billion. The pay package was previously approved, but a Delaware judge tossed it out earlier this year, saying stockholders weren't sufficiently informed about the "unfathomable sum" of money bestowed on him.

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Planet 9 Could Be Lurking Behind Neptune, Study Finds Strong Evidence

The simulation findings showed that the orbital properties of Neptune-crossing objects closely matched those predicted by a model that included Planet 9.

Researchers may have found the "strongest statistical evidence" yet of Planet 9 (also called Planet X)⁘s existence. 

For years, astronomers have been on the hunt for a mysterious planet that could be lurking in the farthest reaches of our solar system.

In 2015, Caltech astronomers Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown (well known for reclassifying Pluto) presented compelling evidence for the existence of this hypothetical planet. They proposed that Planet 9 likely follows an unusually elongated orbit in the outer solar system.

Previous studies have shown how Planet 9's gravitational impact could explain the strange orbits of objects in the outer solar system.

The researchers ran computational simulations that included gravitational interactions with all large planets, the Galactic tide, and even passing stars. They also incorporated initial conditions reflecting the migration of giant planets and the early evolution of the Sun within a star cluster.

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James Webb Space Telescope To 'Unlock The Secrets' Of Seven Planets In Search For Alien...

Commissioned back in 2018 and launching into the cosmos in 2021, the NASA telescope is at the forefront of deep space discovery through its hi-tech equipment.

Just this month, Webb found yet another supermassive black hole that was red in colour and devouring everything around it .

It's also coming across some outright bizarre discoveries in the images it sends back to Earth, including a 'question mark' sitting in space in what is one of the most fascinating things scientists have ever seen.

Sitting some 40 light years away from Earth and the solar system is a star known as TRAPPIST-1, which has seven planets orbiting it.

Doug Hudgins, Exoplanet Program Scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said that if they have atmosphere, Webb will then be 'key to unlocking their secrets'.

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Pascagoula Holds Viewing Party For Netflix Documentary On 1973 UFO Sighting

"Files of the Unexplained" features chilling encounters from people across the world. Events are what witnesses describe as "unexplainable and strange occurrences."

For five decades, the story has been debated about what exactly took place on the Pascagoula River in October 1973.

"We're celebrating that. We have had a lot of traction about that. It's been really good to see the story told on film. We're excited. It's been nearly 51 years. We have the marker underneath the Pascagoula Bridge where it happened. People are able to go and visit there whenever they like," said Susannah Northrop, Executive Director of Pascagoula Main Street.

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Space Technology Conferences (STC) In Turkiye

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University Of Florida Scientist To Fly On Blue Origin Suborbital Mission - News - University Of...

University of Florida Distinguished Professor Rob Ferl will be the first NASA-funded academic researcher to conduct an experiment as part of a commercial space crew on an upcoming mission of Blue Origin⁘s New Shepard rocket.

Now, funded through a grant from NASA⁘s Flight Opportunities program, Ferl has an opportunity to personally conduct experiments on how the transition to and from microgravity impacts gene expression in cells and, more broadly, to develop protocols for future ⁘researcher-tended⁘ suborbital flights.

⁘The University of Florida is committed to the mission of space exploration and research,⁘ UF President Ben Sasse said. ⁘The discoveries that will result from this work will be breathtaking. We⁘re proud of Rob, grateful for our partners, and excited about the work ahead.⁘

Ferl and colleague Anna-Lisa Paul, also a professor of horticultural sciences, have spent their careers seeking to understand plant gene expression in microgravity, but most of their experiments have been done by astronauts in space. As Paul puts it, on launches to the space station, astronauts now generally fly separately from science payloads, meaning that science is done ⁘in space⁘ and not ⁘on the way to space.⁘

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Why Does NASA Want A Time Zone On The Moon? | Space News

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Experts Suggest Using SpaceX's Starship To Rescue Stranded Samples On Surface Of Mars

An independent review board  balked last year at the Mars Sample Return mission's "unrealistic" budget, highly complex mission design, and glaring management failures.

Earlier this year, budget cuts forced the agency's Jet Propulsion Lab to let go of a whopping 530 employees , with NASA leaders racing to keep the MSR mission from imploding completely.

The space agency announced this week that it would solicit proposals from the private space industry for "innovative designs" to return Martian samples collected and bagged by its Perseverance rover over the last couple of years.

"Starship has the potential to return serious tonnage from Mars within [around] five years," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk suggested in a tweet earlier this week, responding to the announcement.

"It's encouraging companies to use infrastructure built for Artemis," he told SA . "The only conclusion you can really draw from that is they're hoping Starship somehow is the solution here."

Former NASA chief scientist Jim Green, who helped establish MSR at the agency, agreed that it could make sense to "leverage assets that we didn't have" when the plan was first devised.

There are an astonishing number of moving parts when it comes to NASA's current plan to return samples from the surface of Mars, an interplanetary Rube Goldberg machine that's already required an astronomical amount of funding and years of planning.

Needless to say, a rocket that could both land and lift off from the Martian surface could help streamline the endeavor significantly.

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Huge 150m Asteroid Among Three Space Rocks To Fly Past Earth This Weekend - World News - Mirror...

It will make a clean pass by our planet and is expected to reach speeds of more than 24,000mph. The asteroid is one of three which will pass Earth this weekend, with two others flying past on Saturday. 2024 GD5 is estimated to be between 11 metres and 24 metres in diameter and will fly past our planet at 3:39am.

Any objects coming within 128million miles of Earth is technically considered an NEO. NEOs are relatively common, despite the scary-sounding name. These asteroids can also be incredibly far away from Earth and still be classified as an NEO by astronomers. NASA said: "As they orbit the Sun, NEOs can occasionally approach close to Earth.

"Note that a 'close' passage astronomically can be very far away in human terms: millions or even tens of millions of kilometres. Occasionally, asteroids' orbital paths are influenced by the gravitational tug of planets, which cause their paths to alter. Scientists believe stray asteroids or fragments from earlier collisions have slammed into Earth in the past, playing a major role in the evolution of our planet."

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Is Space Science Worth The Money?

Space science costs money. To study the Universe and the worlds within it, we have to employ scientists, build observatories and research facilities, and launch spacecraft — among other things. So why is it worth the money? What does space science do for society?

Space science is a broad field that includes disciplines like astrophysics, cosmology, planetary science, and the study of space weather and space environments. Space science uses observational tools such as optical and radio telescopes, exploration missions such as orbiters and rovers, computational and theoretical methods, and more. All of this work aims to understand the origin, evolution, structure, and mechanics of the Cosmos and all that exists within it.

The process of conducting space science also provides a societal benefit by being interrogative, rational, and collaborative. A society that cultivates these kinds of qualities enriches itself. That cultural richness is part of what gives science, including space science, value. Both the outcome (scientific knowledge) and the process (scientific inquiry) of space science are primary benefits.

Although governments around the world understand the value of basic science, it can be hard to prioritize its funding given the variety of competing needs within a nation. NASA's space science programs in 2024 amount to roughly 0.1% of annual U.S. spending, which represents a decrease in recent years. As such, space science sometimes needs to rely on justifications beyond its intrinsic value.

But, as Griffin explains , much of what humans do, from falling in love with one's spouse to enjoying one genre of music more than another, is based on emotional and intuitive motivations. This is a human characteristic, and it plays out in our drive to understand the Universe and our place within it. In many ways, this is why we invest in space science: we want to go to new places and discover new things, witness the beauty and majesty of the Cosmos, understand where we came from and what might be possible in our future, and achieve astonishing feats.

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SpaceX Sends 23 Starlink Satellites Into Orbit Atop Falcon 9 Rocket

This was the seventh flight for the first stage booster supporting this mission, which had previously launched ESA Euclid, Ax-2, Ax-3, CRS-30, and two Starlink missions.

Following stage separation, the first stage was planned to land on the A Shortfall of Gravitas droneship, which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.

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Boston Dynamics’ Atlas Robot Is Leaping Into Retirement

Atlas, the humanoid robot that dazzled followers for more than a decade with its outdoor running, awkward dancing and acrobatic back flips, has powered down. In other words, it is retiring.

On Wednesday, Boston Dynamics, the company that created it, announced the arrival of the next generation of humanoid robots — a fully electric robot (also named Atlas) for real-world commercial and industrial applications.

For anyone worried about what would happen to the hydraulic bipedal machine (a robot home? the junkyard? a window display?) that was created for research purposes, the company had an answer. A spokesman, Nikolas Noel, said that retirement would mean that the Atlas would move to its "robot retirement home," which is to say that it would be "sitting in our office lobby museum" with other decommissioned robots.

"For almost a decade, Atlas has sparked our imagination, inspired the next generations of roboticists and leapt over technical barriers in the field," Boston Dynamics said in a farewell video posted on social media on Tuesday.

The company's farewell video captured the brawny 6-foot-2 machine in action over the years. That included taking a stroll in a grassy field, leaping on boxes (or picking up 10-pound ones), carefully walking on a rock bed and awkwardly shimmying.

But the video also featured some mishaps, including the robot's frequent stumbles such as falling over on platforms, rolling down a hill and leaking hydraulic fluid from its leg inside a lab.

The new model has a big round head that spins completely around, is leaner and can nimbly rise from a horizontal position to a bipedal stance in seconds. Its hips appear to be reversible, so it might be better than us at some yoga poses.

The company's commercial models include Spot, an agile four-legged robot, and Stretch, an elongated warehouse platform.

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Scientists Say They Have Found Evidence Of An Unknown Planet In Our Solar System

For years, some astronomers have been suggesting that unusual behaviour on the edge of our solar system is best explained by another, undiscovered planet. That helps explain the orbits of objects that lie at the very far reaches of our solar system, more than 250 times away from the Sun than we are.

Now Konstantin Bogytin, an astronomer who helped popularise the theory, says that he and his team have found yet more evidence that suggests that planet exists. The new work represents "the strongest statistical evidence yet that Planet 9 is really out there", he said.

The new work looked at those objects that have their movement made unstable because they interact with the orbit of Neptune. That instability meant they were harder to understand, so typically astronomers looking at a possible Planet Nine have avoided using them in their analysis.

"This upcoming phase of exploration promises to provide critical insights into the mysteries of our solar system's outer reaches," the team writes in their paper.

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Pluto’s Heart Was Likely Created By An Ancient Collision

A huge heart-shaped feature on the surface of Pluto has intrigued astronomers since NASA's New Horizons spacecraft captured it in a 2015 image. Now, researchers think they have solved the mystery of how the distinctive heart came to be — and it could reveal new clues about the dwarf planet's origins.

The feature is called Tombaugh Regio in honor of astronomer Clybe Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1930. But the heart is not all one element, scientists say. And for decades, details on Tombaugh Regio's elevation, geological composition and distinct shape, as well as its highly reflective surface that is a brighter white than the rest of Pluto, have defied explanation.

A deep basin called Sputnik Planitia, which makes up the "left lobe" of the heart, is home to much of Pluto's nitrogen ice.

The basin covers an area spanning 745 miles by 1,242 miles (1,200 kilometers by 2,000 kilometers), equivalent to about one-quarter of the United States, but it's also 1.9 to 2.5 miles (3 to 4 kilometers) lower in elevation than the majority of the planet's surface. Meanwhile, the right side of the heart also has a layer of nitrogen ice, but it's much thinner.

The findings are part of a study about Pluto and its internal structure published Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy .

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SETI Chief Says US Has No Evidence For Alien Technology. 'And We Never Have'

"We don't have any evidence of any credible source that would indicate the presence of alien technology in our skies. And we never have," said Bill Diamond, president and chief executive officer of the SETI Institute, headquartered in Mountain View, California. "The idea that the government is keeping something like this secret is just totally absurd. There's no motivation to do so."

Related: 'It's getting closer and closer for sure.' How SETI is expanding its search for alien intelligence (exclusive)

SETI is a key research contractor to NASA and the National Science Foundation, and collaborates with industry partners throughout Silicon Valley. Space.com caught up with Diamond for a close-encounter with his own thoughts and counterpoints to claims of alien visitation and to ask whether there's any signal in all the UFO noise.

Diamond said that, while we should not outright rule out the possibility that we might someday discover evidence of alien technology in our skies, "we should equally not jump to the conclusion that UFOs are alien technology in the absence of any compelling evidence to that effect. And there is no compelling evidence," he contends.

The fastest spacecraft that humans have ever built and continues to head outward from Earth is NASA's New Horizons spacecraft. It was hurled outward back in January 2006, cruising by Pluto and is still adding mileage to its odometer.

"If you sent that spacecraft to our closest neighbor star, Alpha Centauri , it would take 80,000 years to get there," said Diamond. "Any civilization that has mastered the ability to traverse the incomprehensibly vast distances of interstellar space would have technology so far advanced from our own as to be beyond our comprehension."

"If such beings exist, they would likely send hardware here first and not biology, and they certainly wouldn't crash-land in our deserts," he said, like the alleged and highly acclaimed 1947 nose-dive of a UFO and its accident-prone occupants near Roswell, New Mexico.

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NASA Refines National Space Technology Development Priorities

As NASA focuses on exploring the Moon, Mars, and the solar system for the benefit of humanity, the agency's Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) is shifting how it prioritizes technology development . As part of this refinement effort, NASA is asking the American aerospace community for feedback on nearly 190 national space technology needs – or shortfalls – it has identified for future space exploration and science endeavors.

"Our ambitious future missions pose many unique challenges, and STMD is positioned – as the nation's tech base for civil space – to innovate and advance solutions for those problems," said Dr. Kurt Vogel, associate administrator for Space Technology at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "STMD is developing many critical technologies, but shifting to a more open and collaborative approach allows us to better prioritize our efforts and align with key stakeholder needs while ensuring we all get the most bang out of our investments."

NASA aims to collect broad aerospace community feedback on critical technology shortfalls – like additive manufacturing, cryogenic fluid management, in-situ resource utilization, and others – ahead of future operations on the Moon and Mars . Understanding and prioritizing the most important and impactful efforts allows STMD to appropriately direct available resources to best support mission needs for NASA and the nation.

Over the next month, NASA's key technology stakeholders, including U.S. industry, academia, and other government agencies, will participate in virtual meetings, provide feedback, and submit their shortfall priorities to the agency. NASA will process the data and aggregate a final list in order of priority, and it plans to make the final list available to stakeholders and the public.

"Our prioritization process must be rigorous, detailed, and consistent year-over-year," said Vogel. "We intend to be open and transparent, build trust, and provide a valuable tool for STMD and our stakeholders to guide investment strategies across the civil space community."

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Where Is Planet Nine? Its Hiding Places Are Running Out

From observing other stars, we know the possibility of such an as-yet-undiscovered world isn⁘t too far-fetched (figuratively speaking). In 2000, astronomers published a paper showing that an exoplanet might exist around the star HD 163296 at a distance of nearly 50 billion kilometers, over 10 times Neptune⁘s distance from the sun (not-so-humblebrag: I was an author on that paper), much farther out than models at the time suggested. Indeed, several planets were later found orbiting that star at great distances. So a priori, it⁘s possible a planet might exist in the cold, dark depths of our own solar system. It could even be quite large, the size of an ice giant like Neptune .

Somewhat tongue-in-cheek, they gave this hypothetical planet the moniker Planet Nine (or P9), a bit of fun-poking at astronomers still unhappy that the International Astronomical Union demoted Pluto⁘s planetary status in 2006 . And since I brought it up, I⁘ll add that I don⁘t think ⁘planet⁘ is something we need to define; in fact, I don⁘t think it can be defined . It⁘s a concept, not a definition, like ⁘red⁘ or ⁘continent.⁘ The edges around such words are fuzzy, and we shouldn⁘t allow our thinking about them to be overly constrained by arbitrary definitions.

Anyway, over time, more indirect evidence for P9⁘s existence came to light , notably a slight tilt of the sun⁘s spin axis, none of which was conclusive, but all curious enough to keep astronomers searching for a culprit.

Still, all the indirect evidence in the world (or worlds) doesn⁘t add up to a single direct observation of the planet. So the game was afoot.

Many telescopes take sky surveys, wide-angle image campaigns that map large swaths of the heavens to look for what astronomer call ⁘ transients ⁘: objects that change brightness or position over time. These include exploding stars, black holes fitfully gobbling down matter, asteroids and, potentially, Planet Nine.

Brown and Batygin have led the charge to sift through the search data. Along with their colleague Matthew Holman they published their latest results in the April 2024 issue of the Astronomical Journal .

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NASA Selects New Crew For Next Simulated Mars Journey

NASA has selected a new crew of four volunteers to participate in a simulated mission to Mars within a habitat at the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

HERA enables scientists to study how crew members adapt to isolation, confinement, and remote conditions before NASA sends astronauts on deep space missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. Crew members will carry out scientific research and operational tasks throughout their simulated mission to the Red Planet, including a "walk" on Mars's surface using virtual reality. They will also experience increasing communication delays lasting up to five minutes each way with Mission Control Center as they "near" Mars.

In a first for HERA, one crew member, Shareef Al Romaithi, hails from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and will participate in the mission through a partnership between NASA and the UAE's Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC).

As with the previous HERA mission this year, NASA's Human Research Program is conducting 18 human health studies during the mission. The experiments will evaluate the physiological, behavioral, and psychological responses of crew members in an environment similar to what astronauts will face on a trip to Mars. Seven of these studies are collaborations with the MBRSC and the European Space Agency (ESA). Insights gleaned from the studies will allow researchers to develop and test strategies aimed at helping astronauts overcome obstacles on long missions deep into space.

Jason Lee is an associate professor-in-residence at the University of Connecticut⁘s School of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Manufacturing Engineering. He teaches thermal fluids, manufacturing, and sports engineering courses. He also serves as his university's mechanical engineering undergraduate director and its NASA Connecticut Space Grant Consortium campus director.

Stephanie Navarro is a space operations officer in the U.S. Air Force Reserve. She has more than a decade of prior enlisted service in the Air National Guard and was deployed in support of Operation Freedom Sentinel to help provide secure communication capabilities in the Middle East. She began her civilian career as an information technology specialist for the U.S. Army, providing systems engineering for data-center modernization efforts in Hawaii. Navarro currently works at Northrop Grumman as a senior systems engineer, specializing in satellite communication programs.

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NASA Vs. Musk And Bezos: Who Pays Aerospace Engineers More? The Answer May Shock You

Aerospace engineers entering the field today, or looking to advance in their careers, have a multitude of options. They can apply at traditional aerospace companies like Boeing or Lockheed, become government employees at NASA, or seek employment and glory at the next generation of aerospace companies, including private firms like Elon Musk's SpaceX or Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin.

Thanks to the higher profiles of these billionaire-owned companies, traditional aerospace firms and NASA are having difficulty recruiting engineers with the "right stuff," so to speak.

Generous compensation packages undoubtedly aid in recruiting. Ann Richmond, deputy director of talent services at NASA, admitted to Fortune.com that NASA has "little bit of a tougher time" competing with private space companies when it comes to salary.

According to Fortune.com, NASA uses the federal government's General Schedule for pay scales, with salaries determined based on the level of degree held, and starting at $54,557 for an engineer with a bachelor's degree. If you have a doctorate, your starting salary will top out at $73,038.

Private companies have fewer financial constraints when it comes to hiring. SpaceX has listed starting salaries for aerospace engineers ranging from $95,000 up to $115,000. A group engineering manager at SpaceX earns $207,314, according to Comparably.com. The average salary in engineering sits at $136,515, Comparably.com reported.

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NASA Confirms Origin Of Space Junk That Crashed Through Florida Home

By Jess Weatherbed , a news writer focused on creative industries, computing, and internet culture. Jess started her career at TechRadar, covering news and hardware reviews.

NASA has confirmed suspicions that the strange object that crashed into a Florida home last month did indeed come from the International Space Station (ISS). The agency analyzed the cylindrical object after it tore through the roof and two floors of a house in Naples on March 8th and established that it came from a cargo pallet of aging batteries that was released from the ISS back in 2021.

It's not unheard of for space-related junk to find its way back to Earth — components from rockets launched by SpaceX and (more recently) the China National Space Administration have crashed into properties, for example, though such debris typically burns up in the atmosphere. NASA said that also should have happened in this incident, and it's now trying to work out why it didn't.

"The hardware was expected to fully burn up during entry through Earth's atmosphere on March 8, 2024," said NASA. "The International Space Station will perform a detailed investigation of the jettison and re-entry analysis to determine the cause of the debris survival and to update modeling and analysis, as needed. These models require detailed input parameters and are regularly updated when debris is found to have survived atmospheric re-entry to the ground."

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SpaceX Faces Competition From Blue Origin, Rocket Lab And Itself

But after several years atop the space industry, rivaled only by nation states such as China, Elon Musk's space venture may finally be facing a space industry that has grown in its wake and is poised to challenge SpaceX on a number of fronts.

Several space ventures, including Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin, Rocket Lab and the United Launch Alliance — the joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing — are poised to debut new heavy-lift rockets this year to compete with SpaceX's Falcon 9 workhorse. The Pentagon is looking for another provider for the lucrative business of launching national security payloads. Boeing is set to finally launch a crew of astronauts for NASA to the International Space Station, giving NASA, which has relied on SpaceX for the past four years, another way for its astronauts to orbit. (Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

And while SpaceX has dominated the internet satellite industry by launching some 6,000 Starlink satellites, Amazon, backed by a $10 billion investment, is gearing up to fly its own constellation as well.

Those developments, however, may be too late to pose a serious challenge, analysts say, as SpaceX continues to press ahead with reserves of money, momentum and a wartime-like urgency that Musk has infused into the company. Its deep ties to NASA and the Pentagon, which have awarded it billions of dollars in contracts and elevated it to prime contractor status, have also given it a lead that will be difficult to erode.

And SpaceX continues to operate at a blistering pace, expanding the frontiers of what is possible. It flew its Falcon 9 rocket nearly 100 times last year — an unprecedented cadence in an industry that for years flew closer to about a dozen times a year. This year, it's aiming for nearly 150 launches of the booster, which flies back to a landing site so it can be reused.

In a report, Morgan Stanley estimated that SpaceX's revenue for fiscal year 2024 should reach $13 billion, a 54 percent increase over last year. By 2035, as SpaceX's Starlink internet satellite constellation grows, revenue could reach $100 billion, the firm reported.

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2,000-foot-wide 'Potentially Hazardous' Asteroid Has Just Made Its Closest Approach To Earth ⁘ And You Can See It...

The hefty asteroid, named 2013 NK4, is around 2,000 feet (610 meters) wide, making it about twice the size of the "god of chaos" asteroid Apophis, which will make a superclose approach to Earth in 2029, EarthSky reported .

The space rock made its closest approach to Earth at 10:50 a.m. EDT Monday (April 15), when it reached around 2 million miles (3.2 million kilometers) from our planet, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) . At the time, it was traveling at around 37,000 mph (59,000 km/h).

The asteroid is big enough to destroy a large city and cause serious environmental impacts if it were to smash into Earth. According to NASA's calculations, the space rock will likely never get anywhere near impacting Earth. However, due to its size and proximity to our planet, it is still considered a potentially hazardous asteroid .

While the asteroid poses no threat to Earth, its close approach is still of great interest to astronomers, who are currently tracking the space rock with radio telescopes. They hope to capture specialized radar images, known as delay-Doppler images, which should help shed more light on the asteroid's size and shape.

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The April 8 Total Solar Eclipse

On April 8, 2024, the Moon's shadow swept across North America, treating millions to a breathtaking view of a total solar eclipse. As the Moon passed in front of the Sun, it revealed the Sun's wispy white outer atmosphere — the corona.

Pictures of total solar eclipses are beautiful — they capture a moment happening so far away, yet feels so close at the same time. But being there in person, you experience it in 3D. The eclipse doesn't just appear in the sky. You feel it all around you. The light slowly dims, then suddenly engulfs you in darkness from every angle, while the Sun's corona emerges in the sky.

Although you know totality is coming, its arrival can still be overwhelming. For some people, their hearts race or their eyes well up with tears. You try to absorb everything you can in those minutes: from the corona, to the planets peeking out around the eclipse, to the temperature drop, to cheers of excitement from the community around you, even changes in animal behaviors.

Total solar eclipses are a great reminder that humans are animals — we, too, feel the strangeness that causes other animals to have unusual behaviors. When experiencing the sudden change to darkness, and the sudden restoration of light, it can feel eerie and special. The world returns to normal around you, but those minutes of totality were anything but.

On April 8, millions of people gathered across the path of totality, including at 14 NASA "SunSpot" locations where attendees could speak to NASA experts and engage in educational activities. At many locations, visitors set up blankets, lawn chairs, and picnics as they prepared to watch the Sun turn into a crescent until its bright face completely disappeared.

During totality, viewers could spot planets. In this view from Dallas, Venus and Jupiter were very bright. Their brief appearance in the middle of the day were reminders of Earth's place in the solar system.

Viewers could also see bright pink prominences flowing out from the Sun. Prominences are unstable clouds of plasma suspended above the Sun by strong magnetic forces. The prominences spotted during the eclipse were many times larger than Earth itself. It's rare to be able to spot prominences from the ground unaided by a telescope, so seeing these prominences with just your eyes was a unique opportunity for those on the ground.

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Quanta Magazine

These periodic orbits around a model of the Jupiter-Europa system show the varied and intricate possibilities that mission planners must knit together.

To plan convoluted tours like this one, trajectory planners use computer models that meticulously calculate the trajectory one step at a time. The planning takes hundreds of mission requirements into account, and it's bolstered by decades of mathematical research into orbits and how to join them into complicated tours. Mathematicians are now developing tools which they hope can be used to create a more systematic understanding of how orbits relate to one another.

"What we have is the previous computations that we've done, that guide us as we do the current computations. But it's not a complete picture of all the options that we have," said Daniel Scheeres , an aerospace engineer at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

"I think that was my biggest frustration when I was a student," said Dayung Koh, an engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "I know these orbits are there, but I don't know why." Given the expense and complexity of missions to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, not knowing why orbits are where they are is a problem. What if there is a completely different orbit that could get the job done with fewer resources? As Koh said: "Did I find them all? Are there more? I can't tell that."

In 2021, Koh came across a paper that discussed how to grapple with chaotic orbits from the perspective of symplectic geometry, an abstract field of math that is generally far removed from messy real-world details. She started to suspect that symplectic geometry might have the tools she needed to better understand orbits, and she got in touch with Agustin Moreno , the author of the paper. Moreno, then a postdoctoral fellow at Uppsala University in Sweden, was surprised and pleased to hear that someone at NASA was interested in his work. "It was unexpected, but it was also quite interesting and sort of motivating at the same time," he said.

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