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NASA Asked to Name Planet After Trans Artist

SOPHIE-PLANET

SOPHIE died trying to watch the moon, so the trans community is trying to give her a planet. SOPHIE was trying to see the first full moon of the year when she fell from a ladder and tragically died in the early hours of 30 January. She was just 34. After the death of the artist, Christian Arroyo created a petition asking NASA to rename the planet TOI 1338 b in her honour. He explained how she was an influence for the young LGBTQ+ community. “SOPHIE was a highly influential singer, songwriter, and producer who was a great inspiration to … Read more

space: A New NASA Mars Rover Will Arrive on the Red Planet in February

Mars Rover Perseverence - NASA

The long deep-space journey of NASA’s next Mars rover is nearly over. The car-size Perseverance rover, which launched on July 30 of last year, is scheduled to land inside the 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero Crater on Feb. 18. “I am thrilled to be here today as our countdown to Mars winds down from months to just weeks,” Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, said during a news conference on Wednesday (Jan. 27). “Perseverance is closing in on the Red Planet, and our team is preparing for her to touch down in Jezero Crater.” Perseverance is the centerpiece of … Read more

Solar Power Stations in Space?

solar power station in space - NASA

It sounds like science fiction: giant solar power stations floating in space that beam down enormous amounts of energy to Earth. And for a long time, the concept – first developed by the Russian scientist, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, in the 1920s – was mainly an inspiration for writers. A century later, however, scientists are making huge strides in turning the concept into reality. The European Space Agency has realised the potential of these efforts and is now looking to fund such projects, predicting that the first industrial resource we will get from space is “beamed power”. Climate change is the greatest … Read more

STEVE Is Back, And Weirder Than Ever

Steve streaks

The mysterious, aurora-like phenomenon called STEVE just got a little weirder. If you don’t know STEVE (short for Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement) by name, you may know it from photos. Unlike the infamous Southern and Northern Lights, which blanket the sky in ethereal green swirls near Earth’s magnetic poles, STEVE appears as a purplish-white ribbon of light that slashes diagonally toward the horizon, stretching hundreds of miles through the atmosphere. It can appear closer to the equator than a typical aurora, and is often accompanied by a “picket fence” of jagged green points dancing beside it. Nobody knows what … Read more

SPACE: Voyager 2 Says hello

Voyager 2

There’s never been a radio silence quite like this one. After long months with no way of making contact with Voyager 2, NASA has finally reestablished communications with the record-setting interstellar spacecraft. The breakdown in communications – lasting since March, almost eight months and a whole pandemic ago – wasn’t due to some rogue malfunction, nor any run-in with interstellar space weirdness (although there’s that too). In this instance, it was more a case of routine maintenance. And yet, when you’re one of the farthest-flying spacecraft in history – leaving Earth and even the entire solar system behind you – … Read more

SPACE: NASA Just Snagged a Bit of Asteroid Rock to Bring Home (Hopefully)

OSIRIS-REx at Bennu - NASA

For the first time ever, a NASA probe has performed a sample-snagging operation on an asteroid in deep space. The agency’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft spiraled down to the surface of the near-Earth asteroid Bennu Tuesday afternoon (Oct. 20) to grab material that mission team members hope harbors clues about the solar system’s early days and the rise of life on Earth. “We did it!” OSIRIS-REx principal investigator Dante Lauretta, of the University of Arizona, said during a webcast that provided updates about the maneuver. “We tagged the surface of the asteroid, and it’s up to Bennu now to see how the … Read more

Apollo Moon Landing Films Restored With AI Help

Apollo Moon Landing - NASA/DutchSteamMachine

Astronauts on NASA’s Apollo missions to the moon captured astounding movies of the lunar surface, but recent enhancements with artificial intelligence (AI) have really made the films out of this world.  In remastered movies shared online by by DutchSteamMachine, a YouTube channel run by a film restoration specialist in the Netherlands, details from lunar scenes are astonishingly crisp and vivid; from mission commander Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon in 1969 to bumpy lunar rover drives during Apollo 15 and 16 in 1971 and 1972, respectively. The film restorer behind DutchSteamMachine, who also goes by “Niels,” used AI to stabilize shaky footage and generate new … Read more

Another Mars Mission This Month – This One from NASA

Mars Perseverance - NASA

NASA’s new Mars rover will launch toward the Red Planet this Thursday, July 30. The Mars Perseverance rover will explore the planet for ancient habitable environments and signs of fossilized microbial life at Mars’ Jezero crater, which was once a lake. The launch window opens at 7:50 a.m. EDT, according to NASA. Pre-launch coverage will begin at 7:00 a.m. EDT. The launch window will stay open until about 9:50 a.m. EDT, with opportunities to launch every five minutes in that two-hour timeframe. The pre-launch and launch will be livestreamed on Live Science. Mars Perseverance is part of NASA’s Moon to … Read more

SPACE: NASA Names Headquarters Building For ‘Hidden Figure’ Mary Jackson

Mary Jackson - NASA

NASA is recognizing one of its “hidden figures” by naming its main office after the first African American female engineer to work at the space agency. The Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters building in Washington, D.C. honors the late Jackson, who became an engineer in 1958, the same year that NASA was founded. Largely unknown to the general public during her lifetime, Jackson’s story was part of the focus of the 2016 feature film “Hidden Figures,” with Janelle Monáe portraying the trailblazing engineer. “Today, we proudly announce the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters building,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in … Read more

Hubble Image Reveals New Stars That May Destroy the “Pillars of Creation”

Pillars Of Creation - NASA

Spearing the sky like monolithic elephant trunks, the “Pillars of Creation” are a vast region of star-forming material located in the Eagle Nebula, about 6,000 light-years from Earth. These tendrils of gas and dust, made colorful by the radiation of bright young stars smoldering within, became a Milky Way landmark thanks to an iconic visible-light image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995. Now, NASA scientists have shared a new view of the pillars, focusing instead on the infrared radiation normally invisible to human eyes. In the new infrared image (also taken by the Hubble Space Telescope), the colorful … Read more