Space Archive

A November story from Quanta Magazine that was published in Wired today considered the nascent attempts to explain so-called Jupiter Mass Binary Objects (JUMBOs) — gas giant pairs, free-floating and orbiting only each other — littering the Orion nebula.

In this GIF posted by NASA, you can see how the Curiosity rover’s shadow makes its way across Mars’ dusty landscape while parked during a 12-hour period. The footage extends from 5:30AM to 5:30PM local time, giving us a glimpse at the Martian sunset.

It’s no MCU flick, but it runs down more than 15 missions, experiments, and big events to keep an eye out for next year. From Artemis, to Quesst, to a total eclipse in North America on April 8th, here’s your preview (also available as 1080p download).

HughesNet announced its rural internet service now has up to 100Mbps downloads and 5Mbps uploads. Plans range from $74.99 to $109.99 and throttle once you hit 100GB or 200GB, depending on the plan. As PCMag noted, the best HughesNet offered before was an unthinkable 50Mbps down on a $149.99 plan.

Behold the glory of Taters, who stars in an ultra-high definition video that was beamed to Earth from 19 million miles away. Oh, and the video was streamed via laser. Awesome.

Peter Russell-Clarke, who has been with the company as a hardware designer since 2006, left Apple in October, according to Bloomberg. He had worked alongside Jony Ive, the company’s former head of design.

The James Webb Space Telescope grabbed this infrared photo of Uranus’ north polar cap, nine of its moons, and its rings, including “the extremely faint and diffuse” Zeta ring.

Jeff Bezos’ space tourism company was supposed to launch its New Shepard rocket for the first time in over a year, but after a delay due to cold temperatures, Blue Origin confirmed that it is scrubbing today’s attempt completely.

That’s according to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, which said pilots reported radio interference across the United States between noon and 2PM ET on December 14th.

According to New Scientist, a planetary researcher at Southwest Research Institute in Texas named Ben Teolis talked about the seasonal quirks of Uranus’ moons in a presentation at the annual American Geophysical Union meeting last week.

The FCC issued SpaceX a “Special Temporary Authorization” so the company can test “direct-to-cellular communications payloads” to unmodified cell phones, as reported by PCMag.