A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon cargo ship stand atop Space Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida in this file photo. SpaceX has delayed its next Falcon 9 launch from SLC-40 to no earlier than Dec. 13, 2017. SpaceX has delayed the launch of its next cargo delivery mission […]
A Rocket Lab Electron rocket nearly took off from the company’s launch facility in New Zealand on Dec. 11, but launch was aborted seconds before takeoff. The private spaceflight company Rocket Lab aborted a scheduled test launch of its small-scale Electron rocket today (Dec. 11), just 2 seconds before liftoff. At Rocket Lab’s private launch […]
Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt, seen here during the first of his three moonwalks in December 1972, has begun to release his diary of the last lunar landing mission 45 years later. Harrison Schmitt went for a walk on Dec. 11, 1972. Forty-five years later, he is almost ready to share his diary of that […]
NASA’s Columbia orbiter launches skyward on April 12, 1981 on NASA’s first-ever shuttle flight, STS-1. Commanding the 54-hour mission was astronaut veteran John Young with then-rookie flyer Robert Crippen as pilot. NASA’s space shuttle was the world’s first reusable spacecraft. It launched like a rocket, and returned to Earth like a glider. It was designed […]
The planet Mars was formed, along with the rest of the solar system, about 4.6 billion years ago. But exactly how the planets formed remains a subject of debate. Currently, two theories are duking it out for the role of champion. The first and most widely accepted theory, core accretion, works well with the formation […]
Hyperspace travel is the premise that it’s possible to travel at speeds faster than light when energy from other dimensions is harnessed. The idea is a staple of science fiction writers. One famous example is “Star Trek,” where the starship Enterprise jumps from star system to star system to visit other planets. “If Captain Kirk […]
Mars is the “Red Planet” for a very good reason: its surface is made of a thick layer of oxidized iron dust and rocks of the same color. Maybe another name for Mars could be “Rusty.” But the ruddy surface does not tell the whole story of the composition of this world. Dusty crust The […]
Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital vehicle lifting off on a test flight in January 2016. An airspace closure noticed published by the FAA Dec. 9 suggests the company is preparing to resume test flights of the vehicle. WASHINGTON — An airspace closure notice published by the Federal Aviation Administration Dec. 9 suggests Blue Origin is preparing […]
President Donald Trump signs an executive order June 30 to revive the National Space Council during a White House ceremony. A similar event is expected Dec. 11, 2017 for the administration’s first space policy directive. NEW ORLEANS — President Donald Trump is scheduled to sign his administration’s first space policy directive in a White House ceremony […]
Were it not for this past summer’s Great American Solar Eclipse , the most anticipated celestial event in 2017 would almost certainly be the upcoming performance of the Geminid meteor shower. This pre-Christmas display of celestial fireworks is due to reach its peak during the long, dark hours from Wednesday night (Dec. 13) into early […]
Earth “hums” — and it does it all the time. Far from the blaring cacophony of cities, towns and suburbs, there are far quieter soundtracks to be found — the murmurs of wind rustling grasses, rushing waves tumbling onto beaches, the creaking of tree branches and trunks. But underneath all that is yet another soundscape, […]
Vladimir Gross used a scanning electron microscope to capture this image of a tiny, 50-hour-old tardigrade embryo. It started as a speck of a speck, a bundle of nerves and immature tissues curled up inside an egg, bunched up against its siblings. The small clutch of embryonic water bears was immobile, silent, unseeing and possibly […]
Off to court… This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights . Six people recently returned from an eight-month long isolation experiment to test human endurance for long-term space missions. Their “journey to Mars” involved being isolated below the summit of the world’s […]