Space - CybAI news

23 Oct

NASA’s newest telescope can detect gravitational waves from colliding black holes

stp2y0 CommentsNewsgravitational waves, lisa, lisa mission, nasa, news, science, Space, telescopes, tomorrow, universe

NASA showed off for a new gravitational wave detection mission in space. The telescope is part of the mission led by the European Space Agency (NSA) in partnership with NASA.The goal of the LISA mission is to position three spacecraft in a triangular orbit measuring nearly 1.6 million miles on each side. The three spacecraft will follow the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. Each spacecraft will carry two telescopes to track their siblings using infrared laser beams. Those beams can measure distances down to a trillionth of a meter.Gravitational waves are created during a collision between two black holes. They…

17 Oct

SpaceX is suing the California Coastal Commission for not letting it launch more rockets

stp2y0 CommentsNewscalifornia, lawsuit, Legal, news, Space, spacex, tomorrow

Last week, the California Coastal Commission rejected a plan for SpaceX to launch up to 50 rockets this year at the Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County. The company responded yesterday with a lawsuit, alleging that the state agency's denial was overreaching its authority and discriminating against its CEO.The Commission's goal is to protect California's coasts and beaches, as well as the animals living in them. The agency has control over private companies' requests to use the state coastline, but it can't deny activities by federal departments. The denied launch request was actually made by the US Space…

13 Oct

SpaceX successfully catches Super Heavy booster after launching Starship’s fifth flight

stp2y0 CommentsNewsnews, science, Space, spacex, starship, tomorrow

SpaceX’s Super Heavy booster successfully returned to the pad after liftoff to be caught by the launch tower’s mechanical arms in an incredible feat Sunday morning. The milestone came during the fifth flight of the company’s Starship, and is a huge step for the rocket’s planned reusability. Starship launched at about 8:25AM ET from SpaceX’s Boca Chica, Texas Starbase.Landing rockets is nothing new for SpaceX, which has now been reusing its Falcon 9 workhorse for several years, but the company took a completely different approach for recapturing Super Heavy. Whereas Falcon 9 typically lands on a drone ship out in…

16 Sep

A new report raises concerns about the future of NASA

stp2y0 CommentsNewsCongress, nasa, news, report, science, Space, tomorrow

from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) expresses some serious concerns about the future of America’s space exploration agency.The NASEM report was written by a panel of aerospace experts and lays out what it sees as a possible "hollow future” for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). It addresses issues of underfunding due to “declining long-term national emphasis on aeronautics and civil space,” that NASA itself is aware of and agrees with. The report also notes that NASA’s problems extend far beyond having enough funding to carry out its missions and operations.Some of the report’s “core…

15 Sep

The Polaris Dawn crew is back on Earth after a historic mission

stp2y0 CommentsNewsnews, polaris dawn, science, Space, spacex, tomorrow

The Polaris Dawn crew safely returned to Earth early Sunday morning, bringing the historic privately funded mission to a close. The Dragon capsule carrying the mission’s four astronauts — Jared Isaacman, Scott “Kidd” Poteet, Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon — splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico around 3:30AM ET.On Thursday, Isaacman and Gillis completed the first commercial spacewalk, each taking a turn to exit the craft and perform a series of spacesuit mobility tests. And with this mission, Gillis and Menon have now traveled farther from Earth than any women before. Polaris reached a peak altitude of about 870…

14 Sep

NASA confirms it’s developing the Moon’s new time zone

stp2y0 CommentsNewsMoon, nasa, news, Relativity Space, Space, TIME, tomorrow

NASA confirmed on Friday that it’s developing a new lunar time system for the Moon. The White House published a policy memo in April, directing NASA to create the new standard by 2026. Over five months later (government time, y’all), the space agency’s confirmation states it will work with “U.S. government stakeholders, partners, and international standards organizations” to establish a Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC).To understand why the Moon needs its own time zone, look no further than Einstein. His theories of relativity say that because time changes relative to speed and gravity, time moves slightly faster on our celestial neighbor…

06 Sep

Starlink competitor AST SpaceMobile plans orbital launch for next week

stp2y0 CommentsNewsAST SpaceMobile, Broadband, news, Space, tomorrow

AST SpaceMobile is taking another step toward its goal of providing a space-based mobile communications network — one that would turn any standard smartphone into a satellite phone, no additional hardware required. The company that its network of five commercial satellites is scheduled to launch into low-Earth orbit on September 12 from Florida's Cape Canaveral.The company's five BlueBird satellites are equipped with communications arrays that aim to provide standard off-the-shelf smartphones with the same voice, data and video speeds as a broadband tower. Once in orbit, AST's satellites will provide "non-continuous cellular broadband service across the United States and in…

19 Jul

Why an ‘unexciting’ galaxy could provide clues about the universe’s evolution

stp2y0 CommentsNewsESA, gear, hubble, nasa, news, science, Space

NASA and the European Space Agency have released an image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope of a dwarf irregular galaxy that they admit looked "unexciting" at first glance. However, there's more going on than might initially meet the eye. The agencies say that a great deal of research is going into the "complicated structure" of NGC 5238, which is 14.5 million light-years away in the Canes Venatici constellation. In fact, astronomers believe the distribution of stars in NGC 5238 may have been distorted after it swallowed up another galaxy.They reckon that due to NGC 5238's star population (which Hubble…

15 Jul

A new spacesuit design can recycle astronauts’ urine into purified, drinkable water

stp2y0 CommentsNewscornell, design, dune, dune part 2, gear, Mars, Moon, nasa, news, science, Space, space suits, stillsuits, tomorrow

The life of an astronaut may sound like a glamorous career but it requires a lot of hard work and sacrifice. They have to spend weeks or even months at a time away from Earth, their loved ones and the warm embrace of gravity. They have to endure an endless stream of “Tang” jokes. Sometimes they even have to drink recycled wastewater.We say “sometimes” because not every drop of astronaut urine is recycled into palatable water. The urine they expel into their spacesuits is simply flushed away or discarded when they return to the spacecraft. A new space suit designed…

29 Jun

NASA gives SpaceX the privilege of crashing the ISS into the sea

stp2y0 CommentsNewsinternational space station, ISS, nasa, news, Space, spacex, tomorrow

SpaceX to, basically, crash the International Space Station (ISS) into the sea. It’s part of a NASA program to safely deorbit the ISS within the next ten years.The ISS has been continuously operating since 1998 and, like all things, has been aging. The space station is due to end its orbital tenure in or around 2030. However, NASA doesn’t want the whole thing just careening into Earth’s atmosphere, throwing dangerous junk everywhere like season two of Breaking Bad. The agency wants a nice and controlled re-entry. That’s where SpaceX comes in.According to the terms of the contract, SpaceX will develop…