28 posts tagged with space by doctornemo.
Displaying 1 through 28 of 28.

Moon landings, a wooden satellite, Tolkien on Mars, fiery descents

The Martian helicopter completed its final flight on Valinor Hills. "yeah it really could be an ocean moon" - Let's check in on humanity's exploration of space in early 2024. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo on Feb 23, 2024 - 13 comments

Launches, landings, elements, and the fiery golden apples of the sun

NASA started work on this day in 1958. So let's mark the occasion by checking on the past month of humanity's exploration of space. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo on Oct 1, 2023 - 5 comments

Feeling lunar gravity

Had ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the lunar surface. Let's check in on humanity's exploration of space as autumn 2023 draws nigh, starting with the Sun and working outwards from there. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo on Sep 4, 2023 - 13 comments

To the other side of the Sun, to resurrect the last Great Observatory

Launches, satellites, deep space missions, images, and more. Let's check in on humanity's exploration of space for July 2023. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo on Jul 9, 2023 - 7 comments

Hello from lunar orbit! 🌔

An eclipse, the heart of a supernova, rockets up and down the gravity well, and more missions. Here's a snapshot of humanity's exploration of space in April 2023. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo on Apr 16, 2023 - 23 comments

Volcano on Venus

A Martian glacier, rockets, asteroid samples, moons, and more rockets. From the fiery Sun to the search for alien civilizations, here's an update on humanity's exploration of space.

Sol
NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured video of an immense solar flare followed by a solar tornado. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo on Mar 21, 2023 - 8 comments

Moon to Mars activities and asteroid crashing

NASA published its new strategic objectives. And a lot more is going on. Just past the fall equinox, we catch up with humanity's exploration of space. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo on Sep 25, 2022 - 14 comments

From the Earth to the Moon, to Venus, Mars, and more

A roundup of July and August 2022 in humanity's exploration of space. Humans and robots explored, rockets ascended and descended, various preparations are under way, and many plans were aired. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo on Aug 21, 2022 - 18 comments

Looking into the universe in June 2022

Today NASA published the first image captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. That makes this a fine day to catch up on all of the other ways people and our machines are exploring space. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo on Jul 11, 2022 - 163 comments

From Ukraine to deep space

April-June 2022 in humanity's exploration of space. Stand by for rocky passengers, glitches, amazing images, a very French rocket name, Earthly politics, and lots of asteroids.

On the Earth In the Himalayas, a liquid mirror telescope came online. France joined the Artemis accords for sustainable space exploration. BRICS nations announced a new space agreement: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo on Jun 12, 2022 - 12 comments

Rockets, photos, the sun, a space station, and a very distant star

Late March 2022 in humanity's exploration of space. The past couple of weeks saw a lot of activity in the solar system, especially with launches and images. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo on Apr 3, 2022 - 11 comments

The option of dropping a 500-ton structure on India and China

Updates from February 2022 in space. The human effort to explore space continued this month, intersecting the Russian invasion of Ukraine. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo on Feb 27, 2022 - 24 comments

to strengthen its space presence in an all-round manner

The past fortnight in space. Updates from humanity's exploration of the solar system.
On Earth's surface: using data from three satellites, scientists published a visualization of an unusually violent star. A "hard start" delayed an ABL Space Systems rocket test launch. An uncrewed SpaceX Dragon module safely splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo on Jan 30, 2022 - 9 comments

From L2 to the Moon and points elsewhere

The last two weeks of 2021 in space. Starting with the Earth area: Zhai Zhigang and Ye Guangfu, two taikonauts of the Shenzhou-13 mission on board the Tianhe space station, completed a second EVA lasting six hours. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo on Dec 27, 2021 - 7 comments

New space walks

A space exploration update for November 2021. In Earth orbit news, one crew returned from the International Space Station, while a new crew rode a SpaceX flight to board the ISS. The ISS altered its orbit by a mile to avoid incoming debris from an old Chinese launch. Members of the Shenzhou 13 team aboard China's Tiangong space station conducted a spacewalk to build out the station; colonel Wang Yaping became China's first female spacewalker. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo on Nov 13, 2021 - 11 comments

a faint plasma "hum" scientists compared to gentle rain

Another week in humanity's exploration of the solar system. Starting from the sun: the NASA and ESA Solar Orbiter hurtled around the far side of the star from the Earth and tracked a coronal mass ejection. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo on May 19, 2021 - 2 comments

The silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun.

This week in humanity's exploration of the solar system. Let's start at the center. The Parker Solar Probe set two new records as the fastest object ever made by humanity (330,000 miles per hour, 532,000 km/h) and the closest any spacecraft has gotten to the sun (6.5 million miles, 10.4 million km). Back on Earth, scholars published research into Venusian data Parker caught when it last hurtled past that planet (previously). [more inside]
posted by doctornemo on May 8, 2021 - 11 comments

Ingenious

"We can say human beings have flown a rotorcraft on another planet." On April 19th the Ingenuity copter, part of the Perseverance rover mission, took off from the Martian surface, hovered, took a photo of its shadow, then safely landed. It is the first time a human-built craft has flown on another world. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo on Apr 19, 2021 - 36 comments

In and around the solar system this week

Humanity and its machines have been busy finding stuff in space. The Chinese Lunar Exploration Program's Chang'e 5 landed in the Oceanus Procellarum, looked around, collected samples, and fired off a sample-laded return rocket towards an orbiter. (previously) [more inside]
posted by doctornemo on Dec 5, 2020 - 4 comments

Recently in space

Robots, scary galaxies, new outfits, and a lack of spots. Asteroid 1998 HL1 flew pretty close by the Earth. The sun is spotless, and has been so for a while. (Previously) [more inside]
posted by doctornemo on Oct 30, 2019 - 6 comments

The first spacewalker, R.I.P.

"Stars were to my left, right, above and below me. The light of the sun was very intense..." In 1965 Alexei Arkhipovich Leonov (Алексе́й Архи́пович Лео́нов) was the first human being to walk in space. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo on Oct 11, 2019 - 24 comments

Not a dinosaur-killer, OK?

A barely-detected asteroid just buzzed the Earth. First glimpsed by Brazil's SONEAR Observatory just before it arrived, 2019 OK (JPL, Wikipedia, The Sky Live) raced by "at a speed of nearly 55,000 miles (88,500 kilometers) per hour. The closest it came to Earth was just under 45,000 miles (72,500 km), a safe distance, but still much less than the distance between the Earth and Moon." [more inside]
posted by doctornemo on Jul 27, 2019 - 42 comments

From the Earth to the Moon and around the Moon

This week in space. The human race and its machines have been busy with projects beyond the Earth's atmosphere.

On Monday the Indian Space Research Organization (previously) plans to launch Chandrayaan 2, an orbiter, lander, and rover aiming to explore the Moon's south pole. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo on Jul 12, 2019 - 6 comments

Sky train in a common orbit

An astronomers spots dozens of satellites orbiting in a row. Two days ago SpaceX launched sixty Starlink satellites into Earth orbit. Astronomer Marco Langbroek (Twitter) caught them soaring overhead in Europe. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo on May 26, 2019 - 54 comments

A busy week in space

All kinds of missions are under way. Humans and our machines are working hard.

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo touched the edge of space for a second time and with an extra passenger. After circling and dropping landers on an asteroid, JAXA's Hayabusa2 landed upon its surface and shot a probe into it. NASA's OSIRIS-REx probe examined its own asteroid for "multiple, bright, point sources."

Far away from the inner solar system, NASA's New Horizons probe caught and shared even better images of Ultima Thule. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo on Feb 22, 2019 - 28 comments

Hayabusa 2 had landed. And is hopping.

The story of an asteroid, one space probe, and two robot rovers. About 200 million miles from Earth the JAXA space probe Hayabusa2 (Japanese language site; English language site; Wikipedia) has landed two tiny rovers on top of a very small asteroid, 162173 Ryugu. The rovers (named 1A and 1B) are now hopping on Ryugu's surface, taking photos, and sending them back to Earth via Hayabusa2 in orbit. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo on Sep 22, 2018 - 13 comments

This week in space

New images of the universe. Beyond our solar system, one team of astronomers imaged the first ever photo of a planet being formed (study). Citizen scientists created this image of Jupiter's northern hemisphere, based on the Juno spacecraft's raw image feed. Meanwhile, the Dawn probe offered a new set of closeups of Ceres. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo on Jul 3, 2018 - 8 comments

Ride the tides of Titan!

"Saturn's largest moon might be the only place beyond Earth where humans could live" Charles Wohlforth and Amanda R. Hendrix urge some of us to consider becoming Titanians. (via) [more inside]
posted by doctornemo on Nov 27, 2016 - 44 comments

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