Clogs in water recovery systems on the international space station have been so backed up that hoses have had to be sent back to Earth for cleaning and refurbishing. This is thanks to the build up of biofilms: a consortium of microorganisms that stick to each other, and often also to surfaces — the insides of water recover tubing, for instance. These microbial or fungal growths can clog filters in water processing systems and make astronauts sick.
We know the sun belches out solar winds, but the origin of these streams of charged particles remain a mystery and has been the subject of numerous studies over the past decades.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) captured extraordinarily detailed images published today of the Ring Nebula. The gaseous cloud, also called M57 and NGC 6720, contains 20,000 dense globules rich in molecular hydrogen. It sits about 2,500 light years away from Earth.
Russia's first attempt to land on the Moon since 1976 has ended in disapppointment. Ten days after its August 10th launch, Russia's state-run space agency, Roscosmos, confirmed its Luna-25 spacecraft had spun out of control and rammed into the Moon.
Russia is heading back to the Moon as it tries to reassert itself as a significant world power in the wake of its war on Ukraine. A rocket carrying the Luna-25 craft will mark Russia’s first lunar mission since 1976.
Virgin Galactic might hit another milestone today in its quest to provide trips to suborbital space. If the weather cooperates and everything goes as planned for the company, its first private passenger flight will be taking off from its Spaceport America facility at 11AM EDT.
On August 4th, Northrop Grumman's 19th resupply mission for the ISS arrived on the orbiting lab, carrying not just necessities for its inhabitants, but also an experiment that could greatly benefit future human colonies outside our planet.
NASA has reestablished connection with Voyager 2 after a tense two weeks of not hearing anything from the probe. On July 21st, the agency lost contact with Voyager 2 following a series of planned commands that mistakenly pointed it two degrees away from our planet.