Wes Davis
Blue Origin is launching in one minute.
The walkway is retracted and New Shepard has switched to autonomous mode — the launch now can’t be canceled.
Screenshot: YouTube
Space
Verge Science is here to bring you the most up-to-date space news and analysis, whether it’s about the latest findings from NASA or comprehensive coverage of the next SpaceX rocket launch to the International Space Station. We’ll take you inside the discoveries of new exoplanets, space weather, space policy, and the booming commercial space industry.
Wes Davis
An interesting statistic.
Blue Origin’s livestream popped this image up, showing that about eight percent of women who’ve flown to space have been on New Shepard.
Screenshot: YouTube
Wes Davis
Blue Origin has started loading the crew for NS-25 onboard.
The company has also updated its targeted launch time for New Shepard’s NS-25 mission to 10:13AM ET. The livestream is also showing video now.
Wes Davis
Blue Origin has started the livestream for its next crewed launch.
Live coverage should be starting soon for the 25th launch of New Shepard, which hasn’t taken humans aboard in about two years after a booster malfunction on an uncrewed mission paused its space tourism launches in September 2022.
Blue Origin’s rocket is vertical on the launch pad and the company now targeting 9:52AM ET for launch.
Richard Lawler
NASA’s quiet supersonic aircraft is getting closer to taking flight.
We’ve been waiting for the Quesst X-59 and the return of supersonic air travel for years now, and NASA’s latest update says things are moving along:
A Flight Readiness Review board composed of independent experts from across NASA has completed a study of the X-59 project team’s approach to safety for the public and staff during ground and flight testing.
NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission is already running over budget and behind schedule. But it may also be our best chance of finding extraterrestrial life.
Georgina Torbet
Jess Weatherbed
Richard Lawler
The first Boeing Starliner flight with astronauts is delayed again.
The Crew Flight Test was scrubbed Monday night just as the astronauts settled into position, but now NASA says the launch will be pushed back by a couple of weeks, at least.
NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test now is targeted to launch no earlier than 6:16 p.m. EDT Friday, May 17, to the International Space Station. Following a thorough data review completed on Tuesday, ULA (United Launch Alliance) decided to replace a pressure regulation valve on the liquid oxygen tank on the Atlas V rocket’s Centaur upper stage.
Wes Davis
China’s dream moon base has a NASA Space Shuttle.
The China National Space Administration released a video showing its concept for a future lunar base, which it says it will have set up by 2045, writes Space.
The China Global Television Network appears to have blurred out the Shuttle in the video on YouTube.
Wes Davis
Get a load of the horsehead on this nebula.
Scientists using the James Webb Space Telescope recently produced the “sharpest infrared images to date” of the Horsehead Nebula, according to the European Space Agency.
As BBC Science Focus explains, images like this are made up of multiple composites taken at different infrared wavelengths, then shifted to the visible spectrum and combined.
Sean Hollister
The best rocket launchpad Lego’s ever made.
The epic Saturn V and Space Shuttle Discovery didn’t come with a gantry, but Lego’s making up for it with the 3,091-piece NASA Artemis Space Launch System, coming May 28th for $259.99.
How much better is it? Here it is alongside all the other official Lego launchpad examples I could think of:
Note: If you buy something from these links, we might get affiliate revenue.
1/17
Emma Roth
Voyager 1 is communicating properly again.
NASA has finally found a fix after the 46-year-old space probe stopped sending readable data to Earth in November. Voyager 1 can only send information about its health and status for now, but NASA says it’s working to get it back to transmitting scientific data, too.
Charles Pulliam-Moore
Andrew J. Hawkins
Elon Musk’s companies enjoy paying each other lots of money.
Tesla paid X $280,000 for advertising and other services, according to the company’s proxy statement. X paid Tesla $1.02 million for unspecified work. SpaceX paid Tesla $2.9 million for “certain commercial, licensing and support agreements.” Tesla paid SpaceX $800,000 for use of its corporate jet. And Tesla paid the Boring Company $1.2 million.
No one paid Neuralink anything.
Jess Weatherbed
First crewed Boeing Starliner mission will launch on May 6th.
The spacecraft is being readied to carry astronauts Barry Wilmore and Suni Williams to the International Space Station, with liftoff from Cape Canaveral scheduled for no earlier than 10:34PM ET.
The crew is expected to spend about a week at the orbiting laboratory before their capsule makes an airbag and parachute-assisted landing in the southwestern United States.
Jess Weatherbed
Until we meet again, Ingenuity.
After making its final flight in January, NASA’s Mars helicopter has transmitted its last message to Earth and will now serve as a stationary testbed for collecting up to 20 years’ worth of data. Teddy Tzanetos, Ingenuity’s project manager, gave it this moving farewell:
“Whenever humanity revisits Valinor Hills — either with a rover, a new aircraft, or future astronauts — Ingenuity will be waiting with her last gift of data, a final testament to the reason we dare mighty things. Thank you, Ingenuity, for inspiring a small group of people to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds at the frontiers of space.”
Justine Calma
Can mirrors in space bounce solar energy down to Earth?
The European Space Agency plans to find out with a project called Solaris. Scientists and engineers have been trying to figure out how to make space-based solar power work since the 1960s. And the rise of the commercial space industry is finally bringing launch costs down enough to really put the technology to the test.
Elizabeth Lopatto
Is Starlink actually profitable?
The accounting is “more of an art than a science,” anonymous sources tell Bloomberg. But on an operational and ongoing basis? No, not profitable, according to those sources.
Previously, The Wall Street Journal reported Starlink fell short of expectations in 2022. Hm!
Jess Weatherbed
Should SpaceX pay the same taxes as airlines?
While airlines are paying aviation excise taxes that go towards the necessary air traffic controls during takeoff, commercial space companies like SpaceX — which require similar airspace safety measures around launches — are exempt.
Now, the Biden Administration is proposing these companies start paying their share of the government resources being used. Former F.A.A.-licensed aircraft dispatcher William J. McGee told the New York Times:
“This is a question of fundamental fairness. It would be the equivalent of having a toll system on a highway and waving through certain users and not others”
Jess Weatherbed
The Moon is getting its own time zone.
According to Reuters, the White House has asked NASA to develop a plan for establishing a Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC) standard by the end of 2026.
Lunar time works differently, so the aim is to provide a time-keeping benchmark to keep communications between Earth, satellites, bases, and astronauts synchronized. As NASA’s space communications chief Kevin Coggins puts it:
“Think of the atomic clocks at the U.S. Naval Observatory (in Washington). They’re the heartbeat of the nation, synchronizing everything. You’re going to want a heartbeat on the moon.”
Sheena Vasani
Scientists created a car-sized digital camera to understand the universe
The 3,200-megapixel Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Camera will help researchers address cosmology’s biggest questions, including the nature of dark matter and our solar system, by photographing the southern sky for 10 years.
It took the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory over 20 years to build, and now the largest digital camera ever created for astronomy will be shipped to the Andes.
Thomas Ricker
Who pays when space junk rips through your home?
That’s what Alejandro Otero’s about to find out now that NASA has collected an object that tore through his roof and two floors of his home. The incident happened at about the same time that depleted batteries ejected from the International Space Station were supposed to burn up in the atmosphere.
Ars Technica has the full writeup on the fascinating and developing saga.
Wes Davis
Scientists reveal the magnetic structure of black holes with new images.
Scientists for the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration say the magnetic structure of the Milky Way’s central Sagittarius A* black hole is “strikingly similar” to the bigger singularity in the middle of the galaxy M87, writes Phys.org.
They discovered this by comparing polarized images of the two. One researcher told Phys.org that this discovery could mean “this structure is common to all black holes.”
Jess Weatherbed
Northern lights may be visible across the US and UK tonight.
Weather services are reporting that people in northern Britain and as far south as the midwest in the US may see the aurora borealis on Monday night, as geomagnetic storms on the sun’s surface send particle streams toward Earth.
The best viewing time is between 10PM and 2AM (locally) according to the NOAA, in dark, north-facing locations away from city lights.
