A SpaceX rocket prototype, known as SN10, soared over South Texas during test flight Wednesday before swooping down to a pinpoint landing near its launch site. Approximately three minutes after landing, however, multiple independent video feeds showed the rocket exploding on its landing pad. CNN reports: SpaceX’s SN10, an early prototype of the company’s Starship Mars rocket, took off around 5:15…
Tag: crash
Perseverance saw its own descent stage crash
The Mars rover images a plume of debris from the impact of the descent stage that helped the spacecraft land safely on the red planet. Source: https://earthsky.org/todays-image/photo-mars-perseverance-descent-stage-smoke-plume…
‘Earth wind’ may generate water on the moon
Particles carried from Earth’s poles via our planet’s magnetosphere could be interacting with lunar rocks to create small quantities of water on the moon. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/earth-wind-may-generate-water-on-moon…
Juno just saw a spacerock crash into Jupiter
Timing is extraordinarily important in many aspects of astronomy. If an astronomer or their instrument is looking the wrong way at the wrong time, they could miss something spectacular. Alternatively, there are moments when our instruments capture something unexpected in regions of space that we were searching for something else. That is exactly what happened recently when a team of scientists,…
Perseverance will make sure it has a safe landing
To casual observers, landing a rover on Mars can seem kind of like old news, believe it or not, especially after all of NASA’s successes. But many are likely not aware of the so-called “Mars Curse.” The fact is, many of the spacecraft that attempt to land there fail and crash. Source: https://phys.org/news/2021-02-perseverance-safe.html…
To the Moon? Dogecoin Leaps 46% in 24 Hours After Tweets From Elon Musk, Snoop Dogg
Friday the 71-year-old former lead singer of the band Kiss tweeted “I bought Dogecoin…six figures,” to his 922,000 followers, along with other supportive tweets. Saturday rap artist Snoop Dogg tweeted an image of “Snoop Doge” to his 19.2 million followers. Later Elon Musk tweeted a picture from the Lion King with Musk’s head appearing on a monkey holding up a monkey…
Galaxy-Size Gravitational-Wave Detector Hints At Exotic Physics
The fabric of spacetime may be frothing with gigantic gravitational waves, and the possibility has sent physicists into a tizzy. A potential signal seen in the light from dead stellar cores known as pulsars has driven a flurry of theoretical papers speculating about exotic explanations. Scientific American reports: The most mundane, yet still quite sensational, possibility is that researchers working with…
Satellite spots SpaceX’s Starship SN9 from space ahead of explosive test flight
New satellite imagery shows SpaceX’s Starship prototype poised on the launch pad ahead of its high-altitude test flight Tuesday (Feb. 2), which saw the prototype crash-land after successfully completing complex maneuvers in flight. Source: https://www.livescience.com/spacex-starship-sn9-satellite-images-before-explosion.html
A neutron-star crash spotted 3 years ago is still pumping out X-rays. But why?
Three years ago, two neutron stars collided in a cataclysmic crash, the first such merger ever observed directly. Naturally, scientists kept their eye on it — and now, something strange is happening. Source: https://www.livescience.com/neutron-star-crash-still-emitting-x-rays.html
InSight and Juno Keep on Trucking
NASA’s InSight lander on Mars and the Juno orbiter at Jupiter have new leases on life. From a report: The spacecraft are expected to continue gathering data about their respective planetary targets during their newly extended missions, allowing scientists to learn more about seismic activity on Mars and turn their attention to the moons of Jupiter. Juno’s mission has been extended…