ScientistPankaj: Elon Musk giving update on SpaceX's Starship Mars rocket Thursday

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February 7, 2022

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The Launchpad

Astra rocket aborts 1st Florida launch attempt at last second (video)

(Astra/NASASpaceflight.com)

Astra came tantalizingly close today (Feb. 7) to its first-ever launch of operational satellites. The California company's Launch Vehicle 0008 (LV0008) was scheduled to launch the ELaNa 41 mission for NASA today from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. And it nearly happened: LV0008's first-stage engines fired up at 1:50 p.m. EST (1850 GMT) as planned, but the rocket shut the liftoff attempt down almost immediately thereafter.

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Spaceflight

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is cooling down for its next trick: Observing the universe

(ESA)

It's been a whirlwind 38 days in space for the James Webb Space Telescope, but its chief scientist says the mission is well on track to uncover the universe soon. "The telescope is cold ... the instruments are cooling," John Mather, a Nobel laureate and astrophysicist who also works at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said during a livestreamed Explore Mars event.

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Asteroid sharing Earth's orbit discovered — could it help future space missions?

(NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da Silva)

Research has shown that the Earth trails an asteroid barely a kilometer across in its orbit about the sun — only the second such body to have ever been spotted. Should we send a spacecraft to visit it?

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Why Mars helicopters like Ingenuity could glow in the dark

(NASA/Jay Friedlander)

Helicopters making dusk flights on Mars might glow in the dark. A new study suggests that Mars drones, such as the Ingenuity helicopter making periodic sorties on the Red Planet, "may cause tiny electric currents to flow in the Martian atmosphere," according to NASA.

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Science & Astronomy

Strange twin asteroids, the youngest ever seen, likely broke apart just 300 years ago

(UC Berkeley/SETI Institute)

Scientists have spotted two space rocks that may be Earth's freshest asteroid neighbors. The strange pair of near-Earth asteroids is separated by about 600,000 miles (1 million kilometers), and researchers calculated that they likely broke off the same asteroid just a few centuries ago.

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International Astronomical Union launches new center to fight satellite megaconstellation threat

(M. Lewinsky)

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has launched a new center to fight the threat of satellite megaconstellations, which it now describes as worse than urban light pollution. The Center for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky from Satellite Constellation Interference will be run jointly by the U.K.-headquartered Square Kilometer Array Observatory organization and the U.S. National Science Foundation's National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIRLab).

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Rogue black hole spotted on its own for the first time

(Pixabay)

Astronomers may have for the first time detected and measured the mass of an isolated stellar-mass black hole, a new study finds. Until now, all known stellar-mass black holes have existed in binary systems with partners such as neutron stars. In contrast, the majority of the Milky Way's stellar-mass black holes should be singletons. However, nobody has ever been able to find an isolated black hole.

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SpaceX

Elon Musk giving update on SpaceX's Starship Mars rocket Thursday

(SpaceX)

We're about to get another progress report on SpaceX's huge Starship Mars rocket. SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk announced last week that he'll give a big Starship update on Thursday (Feb. 10) at 9 p.m. EST (0200 GMT on Feb. 11). The presentation will presumably be webcast live; if so, you can watch it here at Space.com, courtesy of SpaceX, or directly via the company.

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This SpaceX video of a Falcon 9 rocket stage separation during launch is just amazing

(SpaceX)

A new SpaceX video has captured a striking view of two critical moments in any rocket launch: stage separation for its booster and nose cone jettison. The video, which SpaceX released on YouTube Saturday (Feb. 5), shows the company's Jan. 31 launch of a Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Italian Earth-observation satellite Cosmo-SkyMed Second Generation FM2. The mission lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station last week.

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Technology

US Space Force's 'Orbital Prime' project aims to attack space debris by recycling or removing junk

(SpaceWerx/U.S. Space Force)

A new U.S. Space Force video "demands action" on space debris and asks the private sector for their help cleaning up the growing space mess. The video was released Jan. 5 on the Space Force's SpaceWERX website (its technology branch) to push a program called Orbital Prime, which aims to test out an on orbit-system within two to four years. The first solicitation is due Feb. 17.

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Watch SpaceX launch a US spy satellite and land a rocket in this mesmerizing drone video

(SpaceX)

A stunning new video from SpaceX captures what it's like to watch a rocket launch from mid-air and then witness the booster return to Earth. The video, captured by a flying SpaceX drone, shows the company's launch of the classified NROL-87 satellite for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office. The mission lifted off on a Falcon 9 rocket Wednesday (Feb. 2) from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

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Skywatching

Farewell, Jupiter! The gas giant will disappear from the evening sky this month

(NASA)

It will soon be time to bid a fond adieu to an object that has been a fixture in our evening sky since late last summer: the planet Jupiter. Jupiter is leaving our skies after many months of an impressive display. Currently it's setting just under two hours after the sun and you can still see it quite easily, albeit rather low in the west-southwest sky. It's the brightest "star" in the area.

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SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage breaks up in Earth's atmosphere, 5 years after launch

(SpaceX)

A SpaceX rocket's upper stage appears to have broken up safely over Mexico, five years after sending a satellite into space. Local reports on Twitter indicated that a part of the Falcon 9 that sent the Echostar 23 mission aloft in March 2017 met its demise Saturday (Feb. 6) after falling into the Earth's atmosphere.

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