Tag: science
NASA’s Psyche spacecraft embarks on a six-year journey to its asteroid namesake
NASA’s Psyche spacecraft has blasted off and begun a six-year, 2.2-billion-mile journey to a peculiar asteroid. Astronomers have speculated that the space rock, also named Psyche, was once the partial core of a small planet in the early days of the Solar System. The seemingly iron- and nickel-rich asteroid may…
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There’s no easy answer to being a space janitor
Earth’s orbit is getting crowded. Last year, a record 2,409 objects were sent to orbit, the bulk of which were satellites settling into the increasingly cluttered region 1,200 miles above our planet’s surface known as low Earth orbit. Another 2,000-plus satellites have joined them so far this year, according to…
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Hitting the Books: NASA’s Kathy Sullivan and advances in orbital personal hygiene
For the first couple decades of its existence, NASA was the epitome of an Old Boys Club; its astronaut ranks pulled exclusively from the Armed Services’ test pilot programs which, at that time, were exclusively staffed by men. Glass ceilings weren’t the only things broken when Sally Ride, Judy Resnik,…
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The Morning After: The FTC is challenging Microsoft’s Activision buyout, again
Just when Microsoft’s buyout of Activision finally seemed to be near complete — and we could focus on Google’s legal tussles with the Department of Justice — the Federal Trade Commission said it will revive its attempt to block the $69 billion deal in an adjudicative process. Microsoft received EU…
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OSIRIS-REx used a Tesla-esque navigation system to capture 4.5 billion-year-old regolith
NASA's pioneering OSIRIS-REx mission has successfully returned from its journey to the asteroid Bennu. The robotic spacecraft briefly set down on the celestial body in a first-of-its-kind attempt (by an American space agency) to collect pristine rock samples, before alighting and heading back to Earth on a three-year roundtrip journey.…
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NASA’s OSIRIS-REx successfully delivers asteroid samples back to Earth
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx seven-year mission to collect rocks and dust from a near-Earth asteroid is complete. The capsule containing the final samples returned to Earth on the morning of September 24th, touching down in the desert at the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range at 10:52 am ET. The…
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