At about 1,230 feet across, the Apophis asteroid is slightly smaller than the Empire State Building. On April 13, 2029, that skyscraper-sized space rock will approach Earth, and the European Space Agency plans (ESA) to shadow it. The ESA has announced the Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety (Ramses), a planetary defense mission.
A new report from Reuters claims OpenAI is developing technology to bring advanced reasoning capabilities to its AI models under a secret project code-named “Strawberry.” Among t
NASA and its partners, the European and Canadian space agencies, are celebrating the second year since the James Webb Telescope started sending back photos of the universe by releasing an image of the Penguin and the Egg galaxies. These are interacting galaxies collectively known as Arp 142 located 326 million light-years from Earth, captured by the James Webb in interactive light.
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.
Ariane 6, the European Space Agency’s next-gen heavy-lift rocket, is expected to take its inaugural flight on July 9, ending a yearlong gap in Europe’s ability to access space on its own. The launch vehicle, made by ArianeGroup, replaces Ariane 5, which was retired last July following its 117th mission. The launch window opens at 2PM ET on Tuesday (8PM CEST).
After 378 days inside a mock Mars habitat, the four volunteers for NASA’s yearlong simulation of a stay on the red planet are coming home. The crew — Kelly Haston, Anca Selariu, Ross Brockwell and Nathan Jones — is scheduled to exit the 3D-printed habitat in Houston this evening. You can watch the livestream of their return on NASA TV (below) starting at 5PM ET.
Welcome to the first day of July. Summer is here in earnest, but let me keep you, briefly, indoors with tales of finalized rules for crypto in the US, and how Lego is making bricks from stardust.
NASA and Boeing plan to spend the next few weeks conducting tests on the ground in order to better understand issues with the Starliner spacecraft’s thrusters before giving its crew the go-ahead to fly back to Earth. But, officials insisted in a press conference Friday afternoon, astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are not “stranded” on the International Space Station. “We’re not in a rush to come home,” said Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
There are plenty of Lego sets that feature astronauts, but now there are Lego bricks made out of the stuff that astronauts find out there in the void. The Danish brickmaker has teamed up with the European Space Agency (ESA) to make Lego pieces from actual meteorite dust. Pretty cool, right?
SpaceX just won a $843 million contract 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.