Pankaj Sharma is one of the world's premier speakers on Leadership and Personal Mastery. As a presenter, Sharma has the rare ability to electrify an audience yet deliver uncommonly original and useful insights that lead to individuals doing their best work, teams providing superb results and organizations becoming unbeatable.
Pankaj Sharma is also a Research Scientist.
Thursday, February 27, 2025
SpaceX rolls Starship Flight 8 booster to launch pad
Intuitive Machines shoots for the moon with private lander | NASA to staff: Ignore 'What did you do last week?' email | Save 13% on this Lego Star Wars Millennium Falcon!
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Hey, Space Fans! Today could be the day for Intuitive Machines, a company that is counting down to attempt its second moon launch in 2 years.
The company is hoping to launch its new Athena lunar lander to the moon on a SpaceX rocket tonight on a mission for NASA. It's carrying an ice-hunting NASA drill, called PRIME-1, as well as a hopper robot ("Grace"), tiny rover and even a hitchhiking orbiting probe for NASA called Lunar Trailblazer. Here's what to expect.
Meanwhile, the ongoing cost-cutting efforts of the Trump administration and its Department of Government Efficiency has caused confusion at NASA and other federal agencies after a weekend email directed by Musk asking staff to list their accomplishments offace dismissal.
Acting NASA Administrator Janet Petro released a memo this week directing NASA employees that answering the email was voluntary in a break from the initial directive.
Looking to get away to a galaxy far, far away? This Millennium Falcon build-and-display model can help get you there (well, in spirit at aleast) and is a detailed recreation of the most iconic starship in the Star Wars universe. If you've been mulling over buying one, now is a great time as this rarely discounted Lego set is currently almost at its lowest price ever.
The night sky is full of amazing things this month, but this rare alignment of 7 planets is still a sight few get to see. Astrophotographer Josh Dury captured this stunning photograph of the seven-planet alignment on Feb. 22 from the Mendip Hills, Somerset, U.K. It shows the three brightest planets, Jupiter, Venus and Mars, but also caught Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Mercury. With Earth in frame, that's the whole set!
With SpaceX on track to launch its Starship Flight 8 test flight on Feb. 28, the company has begun stacking the megarocket atop its Mechazilla launch pad. Here you can see the towerig booster, equipped with 33 Raptor engines, as assembly begins for launch. We expect the Ship vehicle to be added soon, possibly today.
Intuitive Machines' Athena moon lander and Starship aren't the only thing SpaceX is launching this week (well, aside from Starlink missions, that is). Two NASA science probes are lifting off on Friday.
NASA's SPHEREx and PUNCH missions are launching together on Friday, Feb. 28, to map the cosmos like never before, as our own Monisha Ravisetti reports. "One is destined to study the sun, and the other is destined to study everything else."
SpaceX sure is launching a lot of stuff this week, but what about that thing that fell out of space? Well, SpaceX has an answer for that.
The upper stage of a Falcon 9 rocket that burned up over Europe last week, dropping debris on Poland, actually suffered a propellant leak that prevented it from a controlled deorbit, SpaceX says. Here's what we know.
Mars beckons (well, it always has, but now perhaps more so), and when start hunting for life on the red planet, scientists may have a new tool. A study of Earthly microbial fossils in mineral gypsum in Algeria produced when the Mediterranean Ocean dried up 5 million years ago suggests that the laser spectrometer used to find them could do the same on Mars. Here's how.
What happens when a sci-fi robot killing machine just wants to watch a space soap opera all day? Well, we'll soon find out in Apple TV's new "The Murderbot Diaries" series, which just dropped its first teaser. Based on the awesome books (Space.com's Tariq Malik has read - an reread - them all) by Martha Wells, the new show will star Alexander Skarsgård as the titular robot just trying to get through the day at its security gig.
Speaking of sci-fi, the final chapter of the Star Wars prequel trilogy, 'Revenge of the Sith', turns 20 this year, and Disney and Lucasfilm are bringing it back to theaters to celebrate. So if you ever wanted to see Anakin lose the high ground on the big screen again, here's your chance.
On Feb. 26, 1966, NASA launched its new Saturn IB rocket on its first test flight. Also known as the Uprated Saturn I, the Saturn IB was built for the Apollo program. With a more powerful upper stage, it was designed to carry the Apollo Command/Service Module and Lunar Module into low-Earth orbit.
NASA used the Saturn IB for flight tests early on in the Apollo program, but this type of rocket never actually launched astronauts to the moon. For that, they used an even more powerful rocket, the Saturn V.
