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Category: space – Page 484

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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.

The team has also concluded that rocks in the crater have interacted with water multiple times over the eons and that some contain organic molecules.

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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.

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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.

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Watch James Webb Space Telescope experts give real-time updates on the final step in the observatory’s deployment: the unfolding of the second of Webb’s two primary mirror wings. Engineers in mission control will send commands to deploy the wing and latch it into place, a process that takes several hours. The deployment will complete the mirror’s golden honeycomb-like structure, and will mark the end of an unprecedented 14-day unfolding process.

Webb launched on Dec. 25, 2021 aboard an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. An international collaboration with NASA partners including the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, it’s the most powerful and complex space telescope ever built. The mission is managed from the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.

For about the next six months, Webb will cool down, calibrate its instruments, and align its 18 primary mirror segments so it can begin to #UnfoldTheUniverse.

Track Webb in space: https://go.nasa.gov/whereiswebb.
Get mission updates: https://jwst.nasa.gov

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In the two weeks since its launch on December 25 at 7:20 am ET, Webb has successfully completed many milestones:

✨ Webb released and deployed its solar array, which means the telescope went off battery power and began to use its own generated power.
✨ Webb has had two planned mid-course correction burns. Webb was launched on a direct path to an orbit around the second Lagrange Point (L2), but its trajectory required correction maneuvers to get there.
✨ The 5-layer sunshield has been fully deployed and tensioned. Did we mention it is the size of a tennis court? 🤯
✨ Webb’s secondary mirror, which plays an important role in reflecting light collected by the primary mirror into the telescope’s instruments, has been deployed.

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