San Francisco-area startup Astra became the latest U.S. rocket builder to reach space on Tuesday, with the successful launch of its Rocket 3.2 vehicle from Kodiak, Alaska.
The rocket came just shy of reaching orbit, with Astra CEO Chris Kemp telling reporters after the launch that the vehicle reached the target altitude of 390 kilometers but was “just a half a kilometer per second short” of the target orbital velocity.
“This far exceeded our team’s expectations,” Kemp said.
“When we actually opened it, I was speechless,” JAXA scientist Hirotaka Sawada said, as quoted by The Guardian. “It was more than we expected and there was so much that I was truly impressed.”
The quality of the sample was outstanding.
“It wasn’t fine particles like powder, but there were plenty of samples that measured several millimeters across,” Sawada added, according to The Guardian.
But Einstein’s failed dream could ultimately become his ultimate triumph, as a small group of theoretical physicists rework his old ideas. It won’t necessarily bring all the forces of the universe together, but it could explain some of the most pressing issues facing modern science.
“While astronauts in space need to get creative with their water supply, that’s not to suggest that people ought to start drinking pee to access clean water. Rather, Aquaporin, the company behind the new system, suggests that the same kind of technology could be used to clean up other types of wastewater or filter existing drinking water supplies to the point that they could be used.”
As Above
Roughly 2 billion people don’t have access to clean drinking water, according to CNN, and a system like Aquaporin could help remove pollution and plastics from the supply.
“It has an enormous potential,” Dines Thornberg, innovation manager at BIOFOS, Denmark’s largest state-owned wastewater facility, told CNN. “I think the Aquaporin system could lead the way in actually creating clean, affordable drinking water from wastewater in the future. I am really optimistic that we can meet the challenges of water scarcity in many parts of the world with technologies like this.”
Although a single cataclysmic event gained most attention this year — the COVID pandemic — there were many other newsworthy developments in science and research, from daring space missions to room-temperature superconductors.
Mars missions, record‑breaking wildfires and a room‑temperature superconductor are among this year’s top non‑COVID stories.
Astronomers have found more than a thousand stars that once belonged to an ancient satellite galaxy inside our own.
Virgin Galactic will fly again when VSS Unity is ready.
A bad computer connection foiled Virgin Galactic’s attempt to reach space over the weekend, company officials said.
VSS Unity, Virgin Galactic’s newest SpaceShipTwo vehicle, lifted off Saturday morning (Dec. 12) from New Mexico’s Spaceport America beneath the wings of its carrier airplane, VMS Eve.
China’s Chang’e 5 lander touched down on the moon and collected the first lunar samples in nearly 50 years, but now the lights have gone out.
Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have captured a striking photo of GAL-CLUS-022058–38303, the largest and one of the most complete Einstein rings known in the Universe.
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A new method called lattice confinement fusion could be the compact, long-lasting energy source we’ve been searching for to power deep space missions 🤯 🚀.