pale blue dot
On December 25, 2020, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft pointed its Long Range Reconnaissance Imager in the direction of its predecessor, the Voyager 1 spacecraft, and photographed location from the Kuiper Belt. Voyager 1 is the farthest human-made object and first spacecraft to actually leave the solar system. In fact, according to NASA, Voyager 1 itself …
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For decades, the exploration of our solar system left one of our neighbouring planets, Venus, largely unexplored. Now, things are about to change. Ian Whittaker, Nottingham Trent University
NASA has published a stunning 360-degree view atop Mont Mercou of the Curiosity Mars rover. The panorama is stitched together from 132 individual images taken on April 15, 2021, the 3,090th Martian day (or sol) of the mission. You can see the amazing panorama by using the arrows in the top left on the video, …
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On May 19, 2021, a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket has launched the SBIRS Geo-5 missile warning satellite for the US Space Force. Photographer Andy Lin (@otromundialista) witnessed the event aboard a plane, and published the video of the launch on her Twitter and Youtube accounts saying “My plane happened to be flying …
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On April 28, 2021, Michael Collins, Apollo 11 pilot and the “loneliest man ever” died aged 90. Collins flew the Apollo 11 command module Columbia around the Moon in 1969 while his crewmates, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, made the first crewed landing in history on the lunar surface.
On April 23, 2021, SpaceX launched four astronauts to the International Space Station (SpaceX Crew-2). The launch was a historic one: for the first time ever people have flown on a reused rocket (Falcon 9 First Stage) and also in a reused capsule (Dragon Spacecraft).
Great news – NASA’s Ingenuity the Mars helicopter performs its first flight. It is the first powered, controlled flight on another planet.
In April 2021, Ingenuity (the small helicopter stored in NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover) will perform the first powered, controlled flight on another planet. And NASA put a small piece of fabric on the Mars helicopter from the wing of the Wright Brothers’ first aircraft, the “Flyer 1”, which performed the first powered, controlled flight here …
When people speak of satellites today, they usually refer to man-made spacecraft placed into orbits and not natural satellites like the Moon. And, even though a lot of our tech relies on this spacecraft, there is still a lot of confusion regarding satellite uses and types – especially in modern schools. Space, however, may soon …
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A highly unusual object was spotted traveling through the solar system in 2017. Given a Hawaiian name, ‘Oumuamua, it was small and elongated – a few hundred meters by a few tens of meters, traveling at a speed fast enough to escape the Sun’s gravity and move into interstellar space. Simon Goodwin, University of Sheffield
