Stories about the wondrous world of space science.
The most accurate clock in the world will pass 50B years before it falls a single second behind. A clock like that could change everything we know about timekeeping and tracking our position in the world, dramatically transforming the precision of our measurements across the globe in a moment. This type of clock is a […]
Asteroid bits from millions of miles away have been safely delivered to Earth’s doorstep. After its seven-year journey, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft flew by Earth yesterday, tossing down a capsule carrying an estimated 250 grams of extraterrestrial regolith. The capsule parachuted down to the DoD’s Utah Test and Training Range and safely landed right-side up. The […]
Wait your turn, room-temp superconductor. We’re still not finished with the AI craze. NASA and IBM launched their open-source geospatial foundation model on the AI platform Hugging Face, the team announced yesterday. The model leverages NASA’s vast inventory of satellite data to provide insight and modeling on the impacts of climate change. “We believe that […]
Each year on this day, the UN honors a little-known event called Asteroid Day. On Asteroid Day, we remember the 1908 Tunguska asteroid, which entered the atmosphere over Siberia and leveled more than 2000 sq km of forest. The event is dedicated to raising public awareness of the risk of asteroid impacts and the importance […]
The Biden administration hosted a pair of events last week showcasing two of its top priorities for space: fighting climate change and promoting diversity in the industry. A warming climate: On Wednesday morning, NASA hosted a ribbon cutting for its Earth Information Center, an interactive exhibit at the space agency’s HQ in DC that’s been […]
Euclid, ESA’s dark energy surveyor satellite, is slated to launch July 1 aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, the space agency announced this week. Ministry of magic: The spacecraft, named after the Greek mathematician Euclid of Alexandria, will map the cosmos in 3D and study how dark energy shapes the universe. Scientists hope the data will […]
Noah Petro will be the science lead for Artemis III, which aims to return humans to the Moon by mid-decade, officials announced last week during NASA’s Artemis town hall briefing at the 54th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC). Petro is the project scientist for NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). The satellite’s observations have helped […]
Blue Origin is opening up about some of its latest interplanetary work. Last week, the Washington company announced two science initiatives supporting humanity’s efforts to push outward into the cosmos. On Thursday, NASA awarded Blue Origin a contract to provide launch services for the ESCAPADE mission to study the magnetosphere of Mars. And on Friday, […]
The brave new world of large language models (LLMs) has finally dealt us a space angle. This week, accompanying a Paris event to preview its new Bard chatbot, Google released an ad about the ChatGPT competitor. The issue? Bard confidently shared an incorrect answer about JWST. The incorrect answer, first shared Monday but widely circulated […]
For the first orbital launch of 2023, SpaceX’s Transporter-6 mission launched 114 small satellites into orbit. The spacecraft on the manifest ranged from cubesats to hosted payloads to orbital transfer vehicles (OTVs). The Transporter satellite rideshare missions increasingly remind us of nesting dolls, as they launch space vehicles that in turn deploy even more space […]
Here we are, in the final weeks of 2022, having learned so much about the vast, mysterious universe we live in. Here’s a recap of some of the biggest moments in space science this year. Eyes on the sky Last Christmas, NASA launched the James Webb Space Telescope in its mission to, as the agency […]
‘Twas a busy time in Paris last week. The European Space Agency announced a new cohort of astronauts and announced a budget of €16.9B for the next three years. The sum falls short of the €18.5B requested by the agency, but still represents a 17% increase over the prior period. Lots of 17s last week: […]
