Great Space

2021-11-09 19:50:20 SpaceX successfully brings crew of four home from the International Space Station
The company’s Crew Dragon capsule splashed down at 10:33PM ET

A crew of four astronauts successfully returned to Earth Monday evening, splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Pensacola inside a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule. Their arrival back on the planet brings an end to a more than six-monthlong stay aboard the International Space Station, and it paves the way for another crew of four to launch to the ISS in the coming week.

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2021-11-07 20:33:37 Image of the Day: Particles From the Sun Produce Light Show on Earth

The aurora borealis glow on the northern horizon while stars wheel overhead in this long exposure, taken near the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah on Nov. 4, 2021. Sky watchers in many locations were treated to unusually intense light displays, thanks to a geomagnetic storm created when multiple coronal mass ejections (CMEs) of charged particles from the Sun interacted with Earth’s magnetic field. Of related note: the location from which this image was taken is just a few miles from the spot where capsules from the OSIRIS-REx and NASA-ESA Mars Sample Return missions are expected to land.

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2021-11-05 21:42:23 Blue Origin loses lawsuit against federal government over NASA’s human lunar lander contracts

Jeff Bezos’ spaceflight venture Blue Origin has lost out on its lawsuit against NASA over a contract to build the space agency’s next human lunar lander. The judgement puts an end to Blue Origin’s monthslong quest to receive government funding to develop the company’s lander, called Blue Moon, for NASA.

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2021-11-03 17:38:23 Amazon’s Project Kuiper hopes to launch first two prototype satellites in late 2022
The company wants to launch them on a new rocket from ABL Space Systems

Kuiper’s goal is to launch a giant constellation of up to 3,236 satellites into low Earth orbit over the next decade in order to provide low-latency broadband internet coverage to the surface below. The plan is to serve rural communities and other areas where it’s difficult to provide infrastructure for traditional internet services. It’s a similar concept to that of Starlink, SpaceX’s broadband internet satellite constellation, which proposes sending nearly 12,000 into low orbit around Earth. But unlike Kuiper, Spacex has actually launched more than 1,700 of its satellites and even created a beta program for hundreds of users. Kuiper has yet to launch any satellites.

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2021-11-01 17:18:32 NASA’s Juno spacecraft finds just how deep Jupiter’s Great Red Spot goes
The storm stops somewhere between 300 and 500 kilometers deep

NASA’s Juno spacecraft is revealing the massive structure of Jupiter’s iconic Great Red Spot, a gargantuan storm that’s been raging on the gas giant for centuries. By passing over the circular storm a couple times, Juno helped scientists confirm that the spot doesn’t just exist on the upper surface but extends hundreds of miles into the planet itself.

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2021-10-28 18:47:09 Blue Origin and Sierra Space developing commercial space station
Blue Origin and Sierra Space announced plans for Orbital Reef, a commercially developed, owned, and operated space station to be built in low Earth orbit.

Designed to open multiple new markets in space, Orbital Reef will provide anyone with the opportunity to establish their own address on orbit. This unique destination will offer research, industrial, international, and commercial customers the cost competitive end-to-end services they need including space transportation and logistics, space habitation, equipment accommodation, and operations including onboard crew. The station will start operating in the second half of this decade.

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2021-10-26 23:15:10 NASA now aims to launch massive next-generation rocket on debut flight in early 2022
The Space Launch System might finally fly next year

NASA is aiming to fly its massive, next-generation rocket, the Space Launch System, for the first time in February of 2022, a critical test flight on NASA’s journey to send people back to the Moon. However, plenty of tests still need to go well before the much-delayed vehicle can finally take flight.

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2021-10-25 19:03:27 Image of the Day: The Force Awakens in a Newborn Star

This celestial lightsaber does not lie in a galaxy far, far away, but rather inside our home galaxy, the Milky Way. It's inside a turbulent birthing ground for new stars known as the Orion B molecular cloud complex, located 1,350 light-years away.

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2021-10-22 22:51:10 First firing of a Raptor vacuum engine integrated onto a Starship

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2021-10-20 22:07:56 The mission to break barriers to space travel for people with disabilities
Mission: AstroAccess has the goal of sending one of its ambassadors to space

When Sina Bahram shifted into weightlessness for the first time on Sunday, he could feel the air brushing past his skin as his body began to float into the air. As someone who’d longed to be an astronaut since he was four years old, he’d been waiting many years to have this exact feeling.

“I knew it would be a joyous experience just because I looked forward to it for many decades of my life, but the visceral nature of that joy wasn’t brought home until you actually experience it,” Bahram, a computer scientist who runs Prime Access Consulting, tells The Verge. “It is truly indescribable.”

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