The International Space Station (ISS), in Earth orbit at hundreds of kilometers altitude, is not perfectly airtight. Every day, the cabin loses a minute how much air, carefully controlled so that a viable atmospheric pressure can be maintained, and to identify leaks. Now the last one just happened, just two …
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Nasa’s Osiris-Rex (origin, spectral interpretation, source identification, security, regolith explorer) asteroid mission has completed its definitive practice game for its upcoming sampling maneuver. The spacecraft is located 288m km from Earth, in orbit around the asteroid Bennu. On October 20, it is planned to drop the asteroid and recommend where …
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A Russian cosmonaut aboard the International Space Station has shared video of five ‘objects’ flying over Earth. The objects were tracked down in a video intended to document the aurora seen as the space station flew over Antarctica. But Ivan Vagner, a cosmonaut who arrived at the floating lab in …
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In 1604, a white dwarf star went supernova. This is very normal behavior for a white dwarf star; but this one, at a distance of just 20,000 light-years from Earth, was visible to the naked eye, and documented by astronomers around the world, including the German astronomer Johannes Kepler. Kepler’s …
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