ScientistPankaj: Watch Ingenuity Mars helicopter soar in amazing new videos from Perseverance rover

Saturday, November 20, 2021

Watch Ingenuity Mars helicopter soar in amazing new videos from Perseverance rover

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November 19, 2021

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The Launchpad

Watch Ingenuity Mars helicopter soar in amazing new videos from Perseverance rover

(NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Stunning new videos show NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity soaring through the Red Planet skies like never before. Ingenuity performed its 13th Martian flight on Sept. 4, cruising through the rugged "Séítah" region of the Red Planet's Jezero Crater on a scouting mission for its robotic companion, NASA's Perseverance rover. During the 160-second flight, Ingenuity covered about 689 feet (210 meters) of horizontal distance, reached a maximum altitude of 26 feet (8 m) and performed a number of tricky maneuvers.

Full Story: Space (11/19)

Astra aims to reach orbit for 1st time early Saturday: Watch it live

After a scrub early Friday, Astra is now aiming to reach orbit for the first time early Saturday morning (Nov. 20), and you can watch the action live. The Bay Area startup plans to send its Launch Vehicle 0007 (LV0007) skyward from the Pacific Spaceport Complex on Alaska's Kodiak Island during a window that opens at midnight EST (0500 GMT; 8 p.m. local Alaska time on Nov. 19).

Full Story: Space (11/18)

Spaceflight

Space station astronauts resume normal operations after Russian anti-satellite missile test

(Oleg Novitsky/Roscosmos via Twitter)

Astronauts at the International Space Station have returned to normal operations after a couple of adrenalin-filled days following a Russian anti-satellite missile test that threw an out-of-control cloud of space debris into the station's orbit.

Full Story: Space (11/19)

Meet LICIACube, the small but mighty spacecraft that will watch NASA's epic DART asteroid crash

A small satellite will watch its robotic colleague smash into an asteroid, tracking the remarkable encounter and sending the footage back to Earth. NASA and international agencies are coming together in the name of planetary defense. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission led by the John Hopkins' Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) is the first mission up for this project. If all goes as planned, NASA's DART spacecraft will launch early Wednesday (Nov. 24) to reach a pair of near-Earth asteroids late next year.

Full Story: Space (11/19)

LightSail 2 solar sail is still soaring above Earth more than two years after launch

An experimental spacecraft testing solar sails as a means of cost-effective space propulsion that could power future missions to distant places is still riding the sunbeams in Earth's orbit more than two and a half years after its launch. The spacecraft, called LightSail 2, is a cubesat about the size of a loaf of bread but fitted with a solar sail the size of a boxing ring: It covers about 433 square feet (32 square meters). This sail captures incoming photons from the sun, just as a wind sail catches the moving air, to propel the spacecraft.

Full Story: Space (11/19)

Science & Astronomy

NASA wants to smash a spacecraft into an asteroid, but don't worry. Earth isn't at risk.

(NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben)

Later this month, NASA will launch a mission to smack an asteroid into a new orbit to prepare for the possibility that an asteroid in the future might threaten Earth. But don't worry, experts agree that there is no possibility that (even if it goes awry) this asteroid-smashing could threaten Earth.

Full Story: Space (11/19)

A new era of planetary exploration: what we discovered on the far side of the moon

In 2019 the Chang'e-4 lander and its Yutu-2 rover were the first human objects landed on the far side of the moon – the side that permanently faces away from Earth. This marked a pivotal milestone in planetary exploration, of equal importance to the Apollo 8 mission in 1968, when the far side of the moon was seen by humans for the first time.

Full Story: Space (11/18)

Skywatching

Nearly total Beaver Moon lunar eclipse, longest of its kind in 580 years, wows stargazers

(Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/Getty)

Skywatchers across North America got a first class view of the longest partial lunar eclipse in nearly 600 years, though for some, frigid weather threatened to ruin the experience. The Beaver Moon lunar eclipse of 2021, which saw the moon 97% covered by Earth's shadow at its peak at 4:02 am EST (9:02 GMT), was potentially visible to millions of stargazers across North America, Central and South America, as well as parts of Australia, Europe and Asia.

Full Story: Space (11/19)

Beaver Moon lunar eclipse 2021: Amazing photos of the longest partial moon eclipse in 580 years

See photos of the Beaver Moon lunar eclipse of Nov. 18-19, 2021 here as seen by skywatchers and Space.com readers around the world.

Full Story: Space (11/19)

Star Trek

'Star Trek: Discovery' season 4 warps onto TV today

(Paramount Plus)

Once again we are able to enjoy two "Star Trek" shows on our screens as the fourth season of "Star Trek: Discovery" dropped Thursday (Nov. 18) on the streaming service Paramount Plus. Entitled "Kobayashi Maru," the first season 4 episode of "Star Trek: Discovery" picks up not long after the third season ends. We know from the trailer shown at New York Comic Con back in October that a strange anomaly threatens the entire galaxy. Billions could be killed. With Federation and non-Federation worlds alike feeling the impact, they must confront the unknown and work together to ensure a hopeful future for all.

Full Story: Space (11/18)