Tag: Space
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Daily Telescope: A beautiful supernova remnant from an uncertain age
Welcome to the Daily Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light, a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We’ll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we’re going to take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a…
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No, the James Webb Space Telescope hasn’t found life out there—at least not yet
The rumors have been out there for a while now, percolating through respectable corners of the astronomy and astrobiological community, that the James Webb Space Telescope has found a planet with strong evidence of life. Some of this sentiment recently bubbled into the public view when the British news magazine The Spectator published an item…
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Rocket Report: A Chinese launch you must see; Vulcan’s stunning debut
Welcome to Edition 6.26 of the Rocket Report! We’re just 11 days into the new year, and we’ve already had two stunning rocket debuts. Vulcan soared into space on Monday morning, and then a medium-lift rocket from China, Gravity-1, made a picture-perfect launch from a mobile pad in the Yellow Sea. It feels like this…
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After its impressive first flight, here’s what’s next for the Vulcan rocket
Early Monday morning, the hefty Vulcan rocket streaked into orbit for the first time, nailing its performance targets and delivering a substantial success to United Launch Alliance on the vehicle’s first test flight. Unfortunately for the mission’s primary customer, Astrobotic, there was subsequently an issue with the lunar lander’s propulsion system. However, Astrobotic was quick…
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Citing “crew safety,” NASA delays upcoming Artemis missions by about a year
Citing “crew safety” as the agency’s chief priority, NASA officials outlined a new schedule for the Artemis lunar program on Tuesday. The roughly one-year delay for each of the next three missions came as little surprise, given the significant amount of work left to be done before astronauts can return to the Moon later this…
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The situation with Astrobotic’s lunar lander appears to be quite dire
On Monday morning, the new Vulcan rocket made a smashing debut, launching from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida and performing flawlessly. After 50 minutes of flight, the rocket’s upper stage deployed its primary payload—the Peregrine lunar lander—into a Moon-bound trajectory. United Launch Alliance declared complete success with its new rocket. After the deployment…
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As Vulcan nears debut, it’s not clear whether ULA will live long and prosper
It’s nearly time. After years of delays, billions of dollars in federal funding, and a spectacular second-stage explosion, the large and impressive Vulcan rocket is finally ready to take flight. United Launch Alliance’s heavy lift vehicle underwent its final review on Thursday, and the company cleared the rocket for its debut flight. With weather looking…
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Juno makes its first ultra-close flyby of the volcano-covered moon Io
On Saturday NASA’s Juno spacecraft, which has been orbiting Jupiter for the better part of a decade, made its closest flyby of the innermost moon in the Jovian system. The spacecraft came to within 930 miles (1,500 km) of the surface of Io, a dense moon that is the fourth largest in the Solar System.…
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SpaceX completes static fire test in push toward third Starship launch
Just one month after the second flight of its massive Starship rocket, SpaceX is making progress toward a third attempt. On Wednesday, at 1:37 pm local time in South Texas, the company performed a static fire test of the next Starship—which bears the serial number Ship 28. The test of the rocket’s six engines appeared…
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US Congress recommends placing assets at Lagrange points to counter China
A bipartisan committee in the US House of Representatives recently issued a report on the economic and technological competition between the United States and China and offered nearly 150 recommendations to “fundamentally reset” the relationship. The report followed a year-long study of the competition between the countries since China’s entry into the World Trade Organization…