Preparations continue toward a target launch date of Dec. 22: https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2021/11/24/testing-confirms-webb…-22-launch
Elon Musk’s SpaceX told Starlink customers they’d have internet service by mid-to late 2021, but some customers say it’s now been delayed to 2022.
Breakthrough Initiatives held an exciting scientific meeting at the beginning of this week, from exoplanets to technosignatures and the future of life on Earth:
Earlier this week, the Breakthrough Initiatives held the scientific meeting Life in the Universe 2021: Our Past, Present, and Future Selves.
Roscosmos launched a new docking node module to the International Space Station (ISS) on Wednesday, November 24 at 13:06 UTC / 8:06 am EST.
Launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the module will add additional docking ports to the Russian Segment of the station to provide options for future expansion but is the final Russian model planned for the outpost.
Continue reading “Russia launches new docking node to space station” »
NASA’s Curiosity rover has marked the 10th anniversary of its launch to Mars by sending back a spectacular ‘picture postcard’ from the Red Planet.
The robotic explorer snapped two black and white images of the Martian landscape which were then combined and had colour added to them to produce the remarkable composite.
Continue reading “NASA’s Curiosity rover sends a ‘picture postcard’ from Mars” »
As Neptune and Uranus could solve the mysteries of planet formation, we need to go back and study them in depth.
Sending a spacecraft to study Uranus and Neptune could give planetary scientists better clues about the formation of ice giants.
The ability to precisely control and change properties of a photon, including polarization, position in space, and arrival time, gave rise to a wide range of communication technologies we use today, including the Internet. The next generation of photonic technologies, such as photonic quantum networks and computers, will require even more control over the properties of a photon.
One of the hardest properties to change is a photon’s color, otherwise known as its frequency, because changing the frequency of a photon means changing its energy.
Today, most frequency shifters are either too inefficient, losing a lot of light in the conversion process, or they can’t convert light in the gigahertz range, which is where the most important frequencies for communications, computing, and other applications are found.
In 2012, astronomers announced a startling result: The had used Hubble to very carefully measure the motion of the Andromeda galaxy, and found that it appeared to heading very nearly directly toward the Milky Way at 100 kilometers per second. They predicted that in about 4 billion years the two galaxies would collide, and chaos would ensue.
In 2019, an update to the measurements indicated that Andromeda was sliding to the side a little bit more than previously thought, delaying the inevitable collision by about 600 million years.
Continue reading “Uncertain future: Is Andromeda going to collide with the Milky Way or not?” »
There are lots of potential uses for a Mars colony. While drinking water is a big one, just as important is creating rocket fuel out of hydrogen.
