All About Everything

Astra's bid to win $12 million DARPA Launch Challenge comes up short

The DARPA Launch Challenge's $12 million purse will go unclaimed. The California-based spaceflight startup Astra scrubbed a planned orbital launch attempt from the Pacific Spaceport Complex on Alaska's Kodiak Island on Monday (March 2). It would have ...

Oddball giant white dwarf may have formed in epic crash of smaller stars

A giant white dwarf star may be the offspring of a collision between two other white dwarfs, a new study finds. The new finding suggests that other ultramassive white dwarfs with similar origins could exist; this may help shed light on how massive a white dwarf ...

Want to go to the moon? NASA is now taking new astronaut applications

If you've always wanted to fly to the International Space Station or go on to the moon, NASA's next recruitment effort promises to bring future astronauts to both locations. The agency began accepting applications for its next class of astronauts today (March 2), ...

SpaceX moving on to Starship SN2 prototype after SN1 bites the dust in test

Elon Musk seems to be taking SpaceX's recent Starship setback in stride. On Friday night (Feb. 28), the second full-size prototype of SpaceX's Mars-colonizing Starship vehicle, a variant known as the SN1, was destroyed during a pressurization test. SpaceX ...

NASA picks SpaceX Falcon Heavy to launch Psyche mission to metal asteroid in 2022

NASA has contracted SpaceX to launch the agency's Psyche mission to a unique metal asteroid. The $117 million Psyche mission will use one of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rockets, and it is scheduled to launch from Launch Complex 39A at Cape Canaveral Air ...

Science X Account

Freeman J. Dyson, theoretical physicist and writer, who embraced the stunning diversity of the universe with unique spirit, died on February 28, 2020 in Princeton, NJ at the age of 96. Dyson generated revolutionary scientific insights, including calculations ...

First SLS launch now expected in second half of 2021

SpaceNews

SpaceNews

WASHINGTON — A top NASA official said Feb. 28 he expects the first flight of the Space Launch System to take place in the second half of 2021, a later date than prior agency statements. Speaking at the kickoff meeting of the Lunar Surface Innovation ...

Machine learning picks out hidden vibrations from earthquake data

Over the last century, scientists have developed methods to map the structures within the Earth's crust, in order to identify resources such as oil reserves, geothermal sources, and, more recently, reservoirs where excess carbon dioxide could potentially be ...

Daily Beast

The Robot Mole Uncovering Mars' Secrets

Daily Beast

NASA is on a mission to understand what lies beneath the surface of Mars. There could be evidence of long dried-up water. There could even be signs of bacterial life. But the self-digging Mars InSight robot that the space agency deployed to the Red Planet ...

How Christina Koch Could Become a Spaceflight Legend

The Atlantic

The Atlantic

When Christina Koch returned to Earth earlier this month, feeling the full force of the planet's gravity for the first time in a long time, it was the middle of the night in the United States. Her capsule parachuted into the Kazakh desert, and by morning, her name ...