(quote)
Landing on Mars is difficult, often fails, and will never be risk-free
China’s rover Zhurong, named after the mythological fire god, successfully touched down on Mars on May 14 — the first time that China has successfully landed a rover on the red planet.
(quote)
NASA’s Perseverance rover just made breathable air on Mars
The Perseverance rover converted carbon dioxide into oxygen on Mars, marking the first time breathable air has been made on another planet, NASA announced Wednesday. A toaster-sized instrument called MOXIE – short for Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment – made the feat possible.
(quote)
China launches Chang’e-5 Moon sample return mission
A Long March 5 rocket launched China’s Chang’e-5 spacecraft Monday to kick off a 23-day mission to deliver the first lunar samples to Earth since the 1970s.
The mission aims to collect the youngest samples so far obtained from the moon and later land in Siziwang Banner,
(quote)
October has not one, but two full moons — and because it’s 2020, the second one naturally falls on Halloween. That gives this year 13 full moons instead of the usual 12. October’s first full moon was the harvest moon on October 1, and the second is a rare full Halloween blue hunter’s
(quote)
Black holes are perhaps the most mysterious objects in nature. They warp space and time in extreme ways and contain a mathematical impossibility, a singularity – an infinitely hot and dense object within.
This morning the Nobel Committee announced that the 2020 Nobel
(quote)
Scientists are flocking to Florida’s Gulf Coast for a glimpse of a mysterious 425-feet-deep “blue hole” on the ocean floor.
The first reports of blue holes came from fishermen and recreational divers, not scientists or researchers. In general, the holes appear to host diverse biological communities
(quote)
If you are a science nerd who is ever bored, NASA has a YouTube channel filled with videos that might tickle your fancy, and among them is a live feed from the International Space Station. Recently, the astronauts on the ISS were doing some routine maintenance on the station but as the camera rolled, a pinecone shaped metallic object moved past the space station before turning upward and shooting off into space.
(unquote)
Photo courtesy NASA
(quote)
@sciencemagazine’s 2019 Breakthrough of the Year goes to the Event Horizon Telescope (@ehtelescope) global network of observatories for the first #realblackhole image. http://bit.ly/35zUtXz https://twitter.com/ehtelescope
Massive, ubiquitous, and in some cases as big as our Solar System, black holes hide in plain sight. The effect of their gravity on objects
(quote)
Astronomers announced on Wednesday that at last they had captured an image of the unobservable: a black hole, a cosmic abyss so deep and dense that not even light can escape it.
“We have seen what we thought was unseeable,” said Shep Doeleman, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and director of the effort to capture the
(quote)
For nearly 15 years, Mars was what you might call the land of Opportunity, as the little Mars rover punched way above its weight and managed to roam the red planet well, well beyond its expected lifespan.
“I stand here with a sense of deep appreciation and gratitude that the Opportunity mission is complete—and with it, the Mars Exploration Rover [MER] mission
(quote)
Standby for the last lunar eclipse for 2 years: The blood wolf moon night of 1/20-21 coming to a North American continent near you
Skywatchers across the continental U.S. will be treated to a total lunar eclipse overnight on Jan. 20-21, when Earth’s shadow sweeps over the lunar surface to give it a reddish tinge and turn it into what some call
CNBC Wed 2 January, 2019
technical challenge to land on Moon’s far side: no direct way to communicate with the spacecraft
China makes history as the first to land a spacecraft on the far side of the moon.
The Chang’e 4 mission launched in early December. It took the spacecraft three days to travel to the moon, where it spent the last few weeks
