The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has grilled Boeing bosses about how a door plug fell off a 737-Max mid-flight over Portland, Ore. in January. Eric Sorensen reports on the push for answers, what the NTSB has discovered, and what Boeing says it's doing to prevent another terrifying incident.
Forward March The space race continues apace as China moves up the date for its historic Mars sample return mission while the US slashes its own trip to collect rocks from the Red Planet. As SpaceNews reports, the chief designer of the Tianwen-3 sample return mission, Liu Jizhong, announced during a recent conference that China's space […]
The Polaris Dawn mission took off Tuesday morning. The civilian crew launched aboard a SpaceX capsule into Earth’s orbit to attempt an unprecedented spacewalk.
Boeing's plagued Starliner spacecraft wasn't empty when it gently drifted back down to Earth over the New Mexico desert over the weekend. While NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams' seats were unoccupied, their empty spacesuits were sent back down inside the spacecraft. That's because those spacesuits won't be of any help from this […]
NASA's Revolutionary 'Solar Sail' Spacecraft Soars Above UK. A revolutionary new NASA spacecraft could be seen flying over the length of the UK in the second week of September 2024. NASA's Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3), launched in April, is testing the use of a massive solar sail to propel spacecraft through space, using only the pressure of sunlight. Its 9-metre-wide solar sail harnesses the solar wind—much like a sailing boat uses wind—to generate momentum. Its acceleration may not match those of rocket boosters, but the lack of resistance in space allows it to build up speed over time - meaning the technology could propel missions to Mars. At the end of August, ACS3 deployed its main solar sail in Earth orbit. The large, reflective sail is visible from the ground when the spacecraft passes overhead at just the right angle to catch the sunlight. If you're lucky enough to see it you'll see a bright 'shooting star' moving towards you across the sky. Rudy Aquilina, project manager of the solar sail mission at NASA Ames, said that the experiment could pave the way for the future of space travel. “This technology sparks the imagination, reimagining the whole idea of sailing and applying it to space travel,” said Aquilina. “Demonstrating the abilities of solar sails and lightweight, composite booms is the next step in using this technology to inspire future missions.”
A Denver-based start-up plans to use powerful lasers to spark a fusion reactor.
Astronomers observed a close pair of black holes dancing around one another using the Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory.
While working their way through the collected bounty of China's Chang'e 5 lunar sample return mission, scientists made a fascinating discovery. Tiny glass beads brought back by the lander in late 2020 suggest the Moon could still be volcanically active today, with the last eruption taking place an estimated 123 million years ago. While […]
China’s LARID detected equatorial plasma bubbles (EPBs) above the Midway Islands and Egypt’s Pyramids, aiding research in space weather phenomena.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — First came space tourism. Now comes an even bigger thrill for the monied masses: spacewalking.
A recent breakthrough has paved the way for timekeeping even more precise than the measurements performed by atomic clocks.
A long robot entered a damaged reactor at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant on Tuesday, beginning a two-week, high-stakes mission to retrieve for the first time a tiny amount of melted fuel debris from the bottom. Specialists hope the robot will help them learn more about the status of the cores and the fuel debris. Here is an explanation of how the robot works, its mission, significance and what lies ahead as the most challenging phase of the reactor cleanup begins. What is the fuel debris?
After several delays, a SpaceX rocket carrying billionaire Jared Isaacman and others blasted off on a mission that will feature the first space walk by private citizens.
China’s historic attempt to bring samples from Mars to Earth could launch as soon as 2028, two years earlier than previously stated, according to a China National Space Administration official.
A man planning a camping trip using Google Maps ran across a uniquely curved spherical pit in Quebec. It may be an ancient asteroid impact crater.
Billionaire Jared Isaacman, two SpaceX employees and a former Air Force pilot are the crew of Mission Polaris Dawn.
Decades-long environmental studies can reveal trends caused by climate change better than projects that last only a year or two.
New theory forces us to rethink some deeply ingrained concepts, such as life, death and disease.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A daredevil billionaire rocketed back to space Tuesday, aiming to perform the first private spacewalk and venture farther than anyone since NASA's Apollo moonshots.
After two weeks of delays, the ambitious Polaris Dawn space mission, led by billionaire Jared Isaacman and in collaboration with SpaceX, launched early Tuesday morning. Lift off came after one final two-hour delay due to "unfavorable weather at the launch site," as reported SpaceX. Isaacman, the CEO of the payment-processing company Shift4, is joined on the mission by former Air Force pilot Scott "Kidd" Poteet and two SpaceX engineers, Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis.
A SpaceX Dragon capsule carrying the four private astronauts of the Polaris Dawn mission has launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida after a few weeks of delays.
