Lifeboat Foundation

The James Webb Telescope (JWST) has finished unfolding its primary mirror, ending a series of major deployments that took place over the span of two weeks. All of those deployments needed to go perfectly in order for the massive space telescope, which was decades in the making, to function.

The JWST has two primary mirror panels on either side that it will use to collect infrared light from the distant Universe. Each of them consists of three gold-plated hexagonal mirrors. Today, the rightmost wing was successfully unfurled, just one day after the leftmost wing was deployed. Now that both sides have been locked into place, this completes the array of 18 mirrors that makes up the 21-foot-wide JWST.

Congratulations, @NASAWebb! You are fully deployed!

On Saturday, the James Webb Space Telescope successfully unfolded its primary mirror, a massive milestone in its mission.

Incredible footage has emerged of a private jet roaring through a narrow pass in California’s so-called Star Wars Canyon.

Aviation photographer Christopher McGreevy captured the breathtaking flight of a Dassault Falcon 8X private jet thundering through the canyon that crosses Riverside and San Diego County in Death Valley National Park.

It is unclear who was flying the jet through the valley, which is made from walls of red, grey and pink rock which look similar to the fictional Star Wars planet Tatooine — Luke Skywalker’s home planet.

When China’s lunar rover first discovered it, the rock appeared cube-shaped.

A mysterious “moon hut” spotted by China’s lunar Yutu 2 rover is actually … an adorable rabbit-shaped rock.

The rock has been nicknamed “jade rabbit” by the Yutu 2 team, which announced its rover’s closer inspection of the object on Friday (Jan. 7). The nickname is apt, as the rover’s name, Yutu, also translates to “jade rabbit.”

https://youtube.com/watch?v=-Zk9N1ViGjc

China welcomed the New Year with a live stream from cameras outside the new Tianhe space station module.

In a new video from the China National Space Administration, livestreamed on New Year’s Day (Jan. 1), you can now see the beauty of the Earth below from the Tianhe module on China’s Tiangong space station. China Central Television began the stream (you can also watch it on Youtube) on the Sina Weibo social media platform, delivering three hours of live footage from the module.

Astronomers believe they have found the first-ever radio emission coming from a planet in the Boötes constellation.

The findings by rover scientists highlight the diversity of samples geologists and future scientists associated with the agency’s Mars Sample Return program will have to study.

Scientists with NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover mission have discovered that the bedrock their six-wheeled explorer has been driving on since landing in February likely formed from red-hot magma. The discovery has implications for understanding and accurately dating critical events in the history of Jezero Crater – as well as the rest of the planet.

Continue reading “NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover Makes Surprising Discoveries Program” »

While many cultures celebrated their respective holiday traditions on Earth, the crew of the International Space Station (ISS) carried on with their busy schedules high above. December 2021 saw three major visiting vehicle movements, one spacewalk, and many of the research and maintenance tasks that allow the ISS to function as one of the world’s most important scientific laboratories.

The Expedition 66 crew currently aboard the station is commanded by Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, who is joined by cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov along with NASA astronauts Mark Vande Hei, Raja Chari, Thomas Marshburn, and Kayla Barron, and the European Space Agency’s Matthias Maurer. Dubrov and Vande Hei have been aboard the station since April, while Shkaplerov arrived in October and the remaining crew members in November.

A high-tech lab in Nanjing in the eastern Jiangsu province of China has claimed that it has made a breakthrough in next-generation communications technology, South China Morning Post reported. The lab was working on a special government project on 6G technology in association with Fudan University and the nation’s telecom giant, China Mobile.

The world is yet to see the potential of 5G and how it could change our world. Although the low latency and high transmission speeds are notable features of the technology, there does not appear to be a common world application that could put this technology to use en-masse. The high deployment costs of the technology have also put a dampener on its rollout, with operators opting for a slow pace until usage really picks up, SCMP reported.

This hasn’t, however, perturbed the engineers’ desire to build the next big thing. Last year, we reported how LG Electronics was working on ushering in the 6G of wireless communication and how China had already deployed a 6G capable satellite back in 2020. The problem, however, is that there is no standard that has been accepted to define what 6G constitutes.