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+30 +1
The Secret Zuma Spacecraft Could Be Alive And Well Doing Exactly What It Was Intended To
A great way to put an experimental stealthy craft into orbit is to imply that it never even made it there in the first place.
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+19 +1
Greetings from Mars
Exploring today's weather on Mars and in your area with the Curiosity Rover.
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+4 +1
Electrohydrodynamic cooling system to beat the heat on deep space missions
A team of mechanical engineers at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute is working on a new electrical cooling system that has no moving parts. Already being tested aboard the International Space Station, the electrohydrodynamic cooler uses electrically charged fluids to carry away heat.
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+12 +1
Engineers aim for the stars with new rocket engine
A 'self-eating' rocket engine which could place small satellites in orbit more easily and more affordably is under development at universities in Scotland and Ukraine.
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+7 +1
Forty years and still going strong
Launched in 1977, the unmanned space probes Voyager 1 and 2 carried out an extensive survey of the planets and moons of the outer solar system. Visiting Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, the Voyager program can only be called an unqualified success on virtually every level. The twin spacecraft returned thousands of photographs and reams of scientific data that fundamentally changed our understanding of our entire solar system. Currently in interstellar space, Voyager 1 is the farthest man-made object from Earth. Voyager 2 is near the edge of our solar system and will one day also enter interstellar space.
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+1 +1
Britain joins the microlaunch space race with a new rocket and spaceport
The United Kingdom has entered the race to develop low-cost, high-volume rockets for small satellites. Orbex, a British-based company with subsidiaries and production facilities in Denmark and Germany, announced Monday that it has raised $40 million from public and private sources to develop what it is calling the "Prime" launch vehicle.
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+30 +1
Traveling to the sun: Why won't Parker Solar Probe melt?
This summer, NASA's Parker Solar Probe will launch to travel closer to the Sun, deeper into the solar atmosphere, than any mission before it. If Earth was at one end of a yard-stick and the Sun on the other, Parker Solar Probe will make it to within four inches of the solar surface.
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+21 +1
Here's one way to find out if there's life out there
A project called Breakthrough Starshot could reveal the secrets of our nearest star neighbors.
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+21 +1
As NASA turns 60, here are the space agency's greatest achievements.
On 1st October, sixty years ago, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration—better known as NASA—began operations, ushering in a new era of space exploration for the United States. The space agency emerged from its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, which was created in 1915, in part, because America was lagging behind Europe in the field of airplane technology.
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+15 +1
Cigar-shaped interstellar object may have been an alien probe, Harvard paper claims
A mysterious cigar-shaped object spotted tumbling through our solar system last year may have been an alien spacecraft sent to investigate Earth, astronomers from Harvard University have suggested. The object, nicknamed 'Oumuamua, meaning "a messenger that reaches out from the distant past" in Hawaiian, was first discovered in October 2017 by the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope in Hawaii.
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+12 +1
AI software helped NASA dream up this spider-like interplanetary lander
Using an AI design process, engineers at software company Autodesk and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory came up with a new interplanetary lander concept that could explore distant moons like Europa and Enceladus. Its slim design weighs less than most of the landers that NASA has already sent to other planets and moons.
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+23 +1
A billionaire’s plan to search for life on Enceladus
Russian entrepreneur and physicist Yuri Milner wants to send a probe back to Saturn's ocean moon Enceladus, to search for evidence of life there. NASA wants to help him.
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+3 +1
NASA is returning to the moon. These are the 9 private companies getting $2.6 billion to do it.
Before the United States can return astronauts to the moon, it needs to send robots there first. As part of that ultimate mission, several lunar lander companies — including Cape Canaveral-based Moon Express — were selected to compete for up to $2.6 billion worth of NASA contracts that will fast-track the nation’s return to the moon.
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+16 +1
2019 will be an extraordinary year in space — here's what NASA, SpaceX, and the night sky have in store for Earth
When it comes to events in space, 2019 is going to be an extraordinary year. That’s not to say 2018 will be an easy act to follow. After all, SpaceX debuted the world’s most powerful operational launch system (called Falcon Heavy), sent a car beyond Mars, and helped lift off more orbital rockets than in any year since 1990.
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+7 +1
The physics trick that has allowed spacecraft to venture deeper into space
Traveling the vast distances of space isn’t cheap. It costs spacecraft time, fuel and money. Fortunately, nature offers free help along the way and mission designers always take it. They’re called gravity assists. In these manoeuvres, a spacecraft exchanges its momentum in a close encounter with a planet to gain velocity. Gravity assists have been used in numerous interplanetary missions to propel spacecraft towards their destinations.
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+12 +1
After 41 years, NASA's Voyager 2 probe enters interstellar space
For the second time in history, a human-made object has reached the space between the stars. NASA’s Voyager 2 probe now has exited the heliosphere – the protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields created by the Sun.
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+19 +1
Preparing for discovery with NASA's Parker Solar Probe
Weeks after Parker Solar Probe made the closest-ever approach to a star, the science data from the first solar encounter is just making its way into the hands of the mission's scientists. It's a moment many in the field have been anticipating for years, thinking about what they'll do with such never-before-seen data, which has the potential to shed new light on the physics of our star, the Sun.
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+13 +1
Virgin Galactic flies its first astronauts to the edge of space, one step closer to space tourism
The two pilots on board Virgin Galactic's spacecraft Unity became the company's first astronauts. Virgin Group founder Richard Branson was on hand to watch the historic moment. Virgin Galactic said the test flight reached an altitude of 51.4 miles, or nearly 83 kilometers. The U.S. military and NASA consider pilots who have flown above 80 kilometers to be astronauts. Test pilots in 2004 were awarded a commercial astronaut badge by the Federal Aviation Administration for flying a previous, experimental iteration of Virgin Galactic's spacecraft design.
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+23 +1
Chinese robots are on a mission to beat NASA to the far side of the moon
NASA’s new initiative to go back to the moon at the behest of President Donald Trump is an intriguing notion, but for now, we’re still relegated to studying and exploring the lunar surface with the help of robots. But it’s not NASA’s robots we ought to be paying attention to—there aren’t any. Instead, China currently has the leg-up in lunar exploration, and it’s poised to make a splash with its Chang’e 4 spacecraft, launched last Saturday.
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+15 +1
NASA Won’t Be Going ‘Back’ to the Moon—It Wants to Go Beyond It
It was an event to commemorate Apollo 8’s breakthrough half a century ago—the first time humans had escaped the Earth’s gravitational pull to orbit the moon, by far the furthest travel from the planet. But NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine wanted to talk about the future. “We’re talking about the Apollo era with an eye for the future,” he said at the sold-out Smithsonian event held at the Washington National Cathedral Dec. 11.
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