Tag: Space & Astronomy
James Webb Space Telescope captures its first images of a star
The James Webb Space Telescope has finally captured its first image of a star — or rather, images. NASA has shared a mosaic of pictures (shown above) of a star taken using the primary mirror's 18 segments. It looks like a seemingly random collection of blurry dots, but that's precisely…
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Billionaire space barons want to build ‘mixed-use business parks’ in low Earth orbit
The Space Race is no longer a competition between the global superpowers of the world — at least not the nation-states that once vied to be first to the Moon. Today, low Earth orbit is the battleground for private conglomerates and the billionaires that helm them. With the Mir Space…
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Hitting the Books: The first man to listen to the birth of stars
If the efforts of the 10,000-plus people who developed and assembled the James Webb Space Telescope are any indication, the age of the independent scientist are well and truly over. Newton, Galileo, Keppler, and Copernicus all fundamentally altered humanity's understanding of our place in the universe, and did so on…
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China’s Chang’e-5 probe finds on-site evidence of water on the Moon’s surface
China’s Chang’e-5 lunar lander has found water on the surface of the Moon, marking the first-ever time scientists have found on-site evidence of the substance on Earth’s satellite. In a study published in Science Advances, Chinese researchers claim the lander detected signs of water molecules or hydroxyl, a close chemical…
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NASA’s $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope will study the universe’s origins
For the past 31 years the Hubble Space Telescope has been an invaluably versatile observation platform for astronomers but it’s begun showing its age of late. Last serviced in 2009, the telescope has had to enter the partial-shutdown “safe mode” multiple times over the last few years — most recently,…
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NASA backs Blue Origin’s Orbital Reef space station
Following October's news that Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin spaceflight company planned to build its own commercial space station in low Earth orbit, NASA announced on Thursday it has selected the program for funding through a Space Act Agreement to further develop the the station's design. The funding is part of…
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