Boeing’s Starliner Mission: A Cosmic Comedy of Errors
Boeing’s Starliner capsule’s first astronaut mission is turning out to be more of an extended trip than originally planned. On June 5, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams rocketed to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard Starliner, embarking on a mission whimsically named Crew Flight Test (CFT). They touched down at the ISS on …
What We Can Learn from Plant Sweat
Scientists are looking to plants for clues that may help them better understand the behavior of wildfires. A research team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) recently released a new study published in the journal Global Ecology and Biogeography that explains how plant sweat can indicate key data about local ecosystems, according to the San …
NASA Unveils First Webb Telescope Images of Unseen Universe
NASA has released the first batch of detailed, full-color images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, which reveal previously obscured cosmic expanses that formed as many as 13 billion years ago. The images target five areas of space, including galaxy clusters SMACS 0723 and Stephan’s Quintet, star-forming region NGC 3372 in the Carina Nebula, …
Webb Telescope Reaches Final Destination One Million Miles from Earth
Just under a month after launch, the James Webb Space Telescope has reached its final destination about one million miles away from Earth, according to CNN. By examining distant exoplanets, the Webb mission aims to answer long-standing questions about how fast the universe is expanding and what happened in its early days. The telescope will …
NASA Delays Moon Landing Until 2025
NASA has announced that no astronauts will be traveling to the Moon in 2024 as originally planned. The agency now aims to send a crew, including a woman and a person of color, in 2025, according to Gizmodo. NASA blames both Congress and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos for the delay, and says its timeline depends …
NASA Launches First Mission to Jupiter’s Asteroid Swarms
On Saturday, NASA launched its first mission exploring Jupiter’s Trojan asteroid swarms, named for the Trojan War by the astronomer who originally identified their orbits, according to The Verge. Over the course of the 12-year mission, the unmanned spacecraft Lucy will target the ancient space rocks with the intent to unveil more information about our …
NASA Finds Evidence of Water on the Moon
A team of NASA scientists using the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy — a Boeing 747 with a telescope at the rear of its fuselage — found evidence of water on the moon in areas where the sun shines, according to CNET. The findings point to “widespread hydration,” according to research published in Nature Astronomy. …
