Latest news with #NASA
Yahoo
7 minutes ago
- Science
- Yahoo
SpaceX launches rocket on Starlink mission after storms, lightning depart East-Central Florida
Hours after meteorologists issued severe thunderstorm warnings and special weather statements across Central Florida, SpaceX crews launched a Falcon 9 rocket under fair skies with 10-mile visibility Saturday, June 28, at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The Falcon 9 lifted off at 12:26 a.m. from Launch Complex 40, carrying 27 Starlink broadband satellites into low-Earth orbit. The post-midnight mission marked the Falcon 9 first-stage booster's fifth flight, SpaceX reported. The booster previously launched CRS-32, NROL-69, GPS III-7 and a Starlink mission. Following stage separation, the booster landed atop the SpaceX drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas in the Atlantic Ocean. Cape Canaveral: Is there a launch today? Upcoming SpaceX, Axiom, ULA rocket launch schedule at Cape Canaveral NASA's Kennedy Space Center had issued its last Phase I lightning watch — giving personnel a 30-minute lead-time warning — at 7:01 p.m. Friday, nearly 5½ hours before liftoff. That lightning watch was terminated at 8:22 p.m. The launch occurred on the 10-year anniversary of a SpaceX rocket explosion following liftoff from Florida's Space Coast. On June 28, 2015, a Falcon 9 that launched from then-Cape Canaveral Air Force Station broke apart during a NASA resupply mission to the International Space Station. That rocket mishap occurred 2 minutes, 19 seconds after liftoff. The Falcon 9 was carrying a SpaceX Dragon capsule packed with more than 5,000 pounds of supplies. On Thursday, Space Launch Delta 45 announced Col. Brian Chatman is now installation commander and director of the Eastern Range at Patrick Space Force Base and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Chatman most recently served as deputy director of the Space Systems Engineering Directorate for the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration. "As the SLD 45 commander, he runs the world's busiest spaceport and is responsible for delivering infrastructure, operations, and support for all Eastern Range launch and test missions," a Space Force press release said. "As Director of the Eastern Range, he is responsible for the safety of launch and test operations across a 15-million-square-mile area," the press release said. For the latest news and launch schedule from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and NASA's Kennedy Space Center, visit Another easy way: Click here to sign up for our weekly Space newsletter. Rick Neale is a Space Reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Neale at Rneale@ Twitter/X: @RickNeale1 Space is important to us and that's why we're working to bring you top coverage of the industry and Florida launches. Journalism like this takes time and resources. Please support it with a subscription here. This article originally appeared on Florida Today: SpaceX launches rocket with Starlink satellites from Cape Canaveral
Time of India
27 minutes ago
- Science
- Time of India
Was the colour of the sky blue during the dinosaur era?
When we gaze up at the sky, it's easy to assume it's always looked blue all through the years. After all, the sky's colour is such a consistent backdrop in our daily lives. But Earth's past is full of unimaginable changes, like shifting continents, evolving life, and even an ever-moving position of our galaxy in terms of the shifting universe. But was the colour always the same shade? A NASA research scientist, Jessie Christiansen, explained that the night sky, and possibly even the daytime one, may have looked a little different during the age of dinosaurs. The reason isn't just atmospheric changes but also the solar system's journey through the Milky Way galaxy. Was the sky during the dinosaur era a different colour from today's blue? The sky we see today is blue because of Rayleigh scattering. Sunlight contains all the colours of the spectrum, but shorter wavelengths, like blue and violet, scatter more when they hit air molecules. Our eyes are more sensitive to blue than violet, which is why the sky appears blue. However, during the time of the dinosaurs, which lasted for about 250 to 65 million years ago during the Mesozoic Era, Earth's climate and atmospheric conditions were quite different. Earth was generally warmer during this era, which meant more water vapor in the air. This didn't necessarily mean more clouds, since cloud formation depends on evaporation and saturation levels, but it could have impacted how the sky appeared. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Everybody Is Switching To This Enterprise Accounting Software [Take a Look] Accounting ERP Click Here Undo This means that while the physics of Rayleigh scattering still applies, the exact appearance of the sky may have shifted due to changes in humidity, temperature, and atmospheric particles. Closer to the end of the Mesozoic, it likely resembled the nearly-clear light blue skies we know today. The night also looked different than today! The sky's appearance also changed depending on where Earth was in the Milky Way galaxy. According to NASA scientist Jessie Christiansen, when dinosaurs such as Stegosaurus and Iguanodons roamed Earth during the early Cretaceous period, "our entire solar neighborhood was on the opposite side of the Milky Way galaxy that it is now." Christiansen explained that "the dinosaurs were around for 200 million years, give or take, so the sky might have looked different early on but more like today towards the end, about 65 million years ago," as reported by CNN. It is never possible to reach the same point that the Earth travelled years ago! Apart from that, Christiansen also said that "we're back to where we were between 200 to 250 million years ago" in terms of our position within the galaxy. But because everything in the galaxy, including stars and solar systems, is constantly moving and rotating around a central black hole, she clarified that "we've never really [been] back at the same absolute point in space because it's not possible." So, was the sky a different colour back then? The answer is probably yes, at least for some time. While it may not have been of a starkly different colour but probably of a slightly different shade of blue as per some reports. While the scattering of light works the same, Earth's shifting climate, atmosphere, and cosmic position likely made the sky appear a bit different at various points in dinosaur history. Photo: Canva
Forbes
5 hours ago
- Science
- Forbes
White House Aims To Halt NASA Missions Across The Solar System
The New Horizons spacecraft sends back its sensational snapshots of Jupiter, and its volcanic moon ... More Io, before the mission's close encounter with Pluto (Photo by: Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images) Universal Images Group via Getty Images The Trump administration's bid to terminate NASA's leading-edge flights of exploration 'across the solar system' may cripple American leadership in space, preventing discoveries that could reshape civilization in what is now considered the first Space Age, says one of the world's top planetary scientists. As space powers across the continents vie to map and image planets and moons, comets and ice-worlds circling the sun, slashes to NASA's funding would represent a great leap backward, crippling it even as rivals race ahead, says Alan Stern, a one-time leader at NASA and a globally acclaimed space scientist. The president's new proposed budget drastically cuts appropriations for NASA, with outlays for its planetary science missions—the exploration of Pluto and other celestial worlds by space-borne rockets and robots, cameras and telescopes—axed almost in half. Now facing the guillotine—inexplicably—are constellations of technologically advanced space probes developed by NASA and spearheading scientists across America, including the Juno imager now orbiting Jupiter, the Mars Odyssey and Maven spacecraft gliding above Mars and the asteroid hunter OSIRIS-Apophis. NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft, in orbit around Mars, is one of the leading-edge explorers slated to ... More be terminated by the White House. Shown here is an artist's impression of the orbiter. (Photo) Getty Images 'Incredibly, this budget proposes to turn off 55 perfectly working, productive spacecraft across the solar system,' Dr. Stern, who once headed NASA's Science Mission Directorate, tells me in an interview. Stern took up that post after conceiving and designing one of the American space agency's most sensational missions ever - the New Horizons spacecraft that aced a close approach with Pluto while sending back fantastical images of the otherworldly orb and its moons - a miniature planetary system that generated billions of hits when it began beaming down across NASA's website. While New Horizons continues its super-speed flight through the outer solar system, charting the mysterious frozen reaches of the Kuiper belt, the president's plan calls for the spacecraft to be cast away. Abandoning the $900-million mission in order to recoup the minimal costs of its ongoing operation makes no sense economically or scientifically, Stern says. The robotic photographer New Horizons images Pluto as it speeds through the outer solar system ... More (Photo by NASA/APL/SwRI via Getty Images) Getty Images 'With New Horizons,' he says, 'there are a lot of important scientific objectives still ahead, things no other spacecraft can do.' 'Terminating this mission would also represent a tragic loss of soft power projection for the U.S.' The Horizons craft, and its array of next-generation cameras and spectrometers, is exploring a region beyond Pluto that no other human-created probe has ever entered, with a treasure trove of potential discoveries waiting. 'This would be like sending a message to [Christopher] Columbus to sink his ships while they were in North America,' Stern tells me, upending a new age of discovery. 'With New Horizons, we have the power and the fuel to run this mission for another 20 years … and we have more Kuiper belt objects to explore.' The White House, in issuing its slashed budget plan for NASA, never provided a logical rationale for torpedoing some of the agency's world-leading missions to survey and image the solar system. Its inscrutable sinking of some of these vanguard voyages was unveiled with the terseness of a telegram: 'Operating missions that have completed their prime missions (New Horizons and Juno) and the follow-on mission to OSIRIX-REx, OSIRIS-Apophis Explorer, are eliminated.' The asteroid-hunter OSIRIS spacecraft, shown here at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is one of ... More the trailblazers set to be terminated by the White House. (Photo by Bruce Weaver / AFP) (Photo by BRUCE WEAVER/AFP via Getty Images) AFP via Getty Images The OSIRIS spacecraft, which had been slated to rendezvous with the closely approaching Apophis asteroid ahead, is a precursor mission to defending the Earth's eight billion citizens against doomsday cosmic strikes by colossal comets or asteroids of the future. The robotic photographer Juno has snapped an endless kaleidoscope of imagery as it floats around Jupiter. Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab have posted raw impressions of the orb and its moons and invited 'citizen scientists' to Photoshop and launch them across the cybersphere. In the process, they are becoming part of the spacefaring civilization that is spreading out across the globe. Model of the $1-billion Juno spacecraft, which is now orbiting and photographing Jupiter (Photo by ... More) Getty Images During its own space odyssey, New Horizons has astounded stargazers, students and scholars worldwide with its technicolor panoramas of Pluto, covered in surreal ice-fields and cryo-volcanoes, and its age-old companion Charon. The twin netherworlds—named after the mythical Greek god of the underworld and the pilot who shuttled souls across the river Styx—circle more than five billion kilometers distant from the sun, along an orbit that Stern's Pluto expedition took nine years to reach. Now, even as it whizzes beyond all of the classical planets, New Horizons, and its future, has entered the purgatory of potential excommunication by mission controllers—and their masters—six worlds away. The New Horizons spacecraft, now speeding through the outer solar system, could be jettisoned under ... More a White House plan that would destroy American leadership in planetary science missions. (Photo by Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images) Heritage Images via Getty Images 'This is a vast and tragic mistake,' Stern says, 'because the issue is larger than just NASA, it also affects U.S. world leadership [and] responsible government that protects taxpayers from waste like this.' The administration's crash-and-burn dismissal of the solar system's trailblazing robotic discoverers has triggered trepidation across NASA, whose ranks of pioneering scientists are likewise set to be culled. Within NASA, Alan Stern is a pole star of cutting-edge exploration, helping guide more than two dozen missions. After his New Horizons spacecraft rendezvoused with Pluto, the agency bestowed its highest honor on him - the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal. 'Stern led the team that returned remarkable imagery and other data from the Pluto system last summer, generating headlines worldwide and setting a record for the farthest world ever explored,' NASA's leaders said. "New Horizons represents the best of humanity and reminds us of why we explore,' added Jim Green, NASA's director of planetary science. "The first flyby of Pluto is a remarkable achievement.' Being given the chance to lead the close encounter with Pluto, Stern said on accepting the award, 'has been the greatest honor of my lifetime.' Around the same time, NASA film-makers paid tribute to Stern, his 2000+ Pluto mission colleagues, and the target of their interplanetary expedition in the captivating documentary ' The Year of Pluto .' Stern has himself chronicled his trek across the twilight reaches of the star system in a series of fascinating books, including Pluto and Charon: Ice Worlds on the Ragged Edge of the Solar System and Chasing New Horizons, and in a torrent of acclaimed papers . Scholar Stern predicts that if the White House's proposed death sentence for flotillas of pathfinding space missions is actually carried out, that would mark the decline and fall of NASA's planetary science breakthroughs, and the comparative rise of its competitors in the renewed space race of the 2020s. If NASA's funding and inter-planet journeys are decimated, he tells me, 'These cuts will absolutely destroy U.S. leadership in all the space sciences.' 'This is tragically misguided.' The potential death knell for an armada of space discovery missions has been reverberating not just across NASA, but also throughout the U.S. universities that help conceive or design these flights. 'Certainly termination of the New Horizons mission would be terrible,' says Kip Hodges , who as founding director of Arizona State University's School of Earth and Space Exploration helped transform the university into one of the top American space studies centers. 'This a real frontier mission at this point,' he tells me in an interview, 'delivering important new information about distant parts of our Sun's heliosphere.' Congress has the power to save NASA and its leading-edge robotic explorers across the solar system ... More (Illustration by Tobias Roetsch/Future Publishing via Getty Images) Future Publishing via Getty Images Professor Hodges , one of the top space scholars in the U.S., predicts that the Swords of Damocles now hanging above New Horizons and other new-frontier flights could still be lifted. If the White House plan to cut away at NASA and its revolutionary planetary scouting missions were enacted as is, he predicts, 'a great many folks in industry, the NASA labs, and academia will be disappointed.' Yet he adds that 'the budget for NASA evolves over several stages,' with the president's initial proposal just one of competing models—one that could be rejected as the Senate and House of Representatives look afresh at NASA's missions, goals and funding. After the twin chambers reach a consensus on reshaping NASA for the next phase of its evolution, Professor Hodges adds, 'Quite often, the appropriated budget is not the president's budget.' That means space aficionados across America who seek to overturn the president's capital sentence on NASA's boundary-breaking missions have a clear channel of recourse, Stern says. Would-be petitioners for a reprieve, he advises, 'should contact their elected representatives in Congress and tell them this is a huge mistake.'
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Hello, neighbor! See the Andromeda galaxy like never before in stunning new image from NASA's Chandra telescope (video)
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The galaxy next door to the Milky Way, Andromeda, has never looked as stunning as it does in a new image from NASA's Chandra X-ray space telescope. The image of the galaxy, also known as Messier 31 (M31), was created with assistance from a range of other space telescopes and ground-based instruments including the European Space Agency (ESA) XMM-Newton mission, NASA's retired space telescopes GALEX and the Spitzer Space Telescope as well as the Infrared Astronomy Satellite, COBE, Planck, and Herschel, in addition to radio data from the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope. All these instruments observed Andromeda in different wavelengths of light across the electromagnetic spectrum, with astronomers bringing this data together to create a stunning and intricate image. The image is a fitting tribute to astronomer Vera C. Rubin, who was responsible for the discovery of dark matter thanks to her observations of Andromeda. As the closest large galaxy to the Milky Way, at just around 2.5 million light-years away, Andromeda has been vital in allowing astronomers to study aspects of galaxies that aren't accessible from our own galaxy. For example, from inside the Milky Way, we can't see our galaxy's spiral arms, but we can see the spiral arms of Andromeda. Every wavelength of light that was brought together to create this incredible new image of Andromeda tells astronomers something different and unique about the galaxy next door. For example, the X-ray data provided by Chandra has revealed the high-energy radiation released from around Andromeda's central supermassive black hole, known as M31*. M31* is considerably larger than the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way, known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). While our home supermassive black hole has a mass 4.3 million times that of the sun, M31* dwarfs it with a mass 100 million times that of the sun. M31* is also notable for its occasional flares, one of which was observed in X-rays back in 2013, while Sgr A* is a much "quieter" black hole. Andromeda was chosen as a tribute to Rubin because this neighboring galaxy played a crucial role in the astronomer's discovery of a missing element of the universe. An element that we now call dark matter. In the 1960s, Rubin and collaborators precisely measured the rotation of Andromeda. They found that the speed at which this galaxy's spiral arms spun indicated that the galaxy was surrounded by a vast halo of an unknown and invisible form of matter. The mass of this matter provided the gravitational influence that was preventing Andromeda from flying apart due to its rotational speed. The gravity of its visible matter wouldn't have been sufficient to hold this galaxy then, astronomers have discovered that all large galaxies seem to be surrounded by similar haloes of what is now known as dark matter. This has led to the discovery that the matter which comprises all the things we see around us — stars, planets, moons, our bodies, next door's cat — accounts for just 15% of the "stuff" in the cosmos, with dark matter accounting for the other 85%. The finding has also prompted the search for particles beyond the standard model of particle physics that could compose dark matter. Thus, there's no doubt that Rubin's work delivered a watershed moment in astronomy, and one of the most important breakthroughs in modern science, fundamentally changing our concept of the universe. Related Stories: — How did Andromeda's dwarf galaxies form? Hubble Telescope finds more questions than answers — The Milky Way may not collide with neighboring galaxy Andromeda after all: 'From near-certainty to a coin flip' — Gorgeous deep space photo captures the Andromeda Galaxy surrounded by glowing gas June 2025 has been a brilliant month of recognition of Rubin's immense impact on astronomy and her lasting legacy. In addition to this tribute image, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory released its first images of the cosmos as it gears up to conduct a 10-year observing program of the southern sky called the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). Additionally, in recognition of Rubin's monumental contributions to our understanding of the universe, the United States Mint recently released a quarter featuring Rubin as part of its American Women Quarters Program. She is the first astronomer to be honored in the series.
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Rare daytime fireball bright enough to be seen from orbit may have punched a hole in a house in Georgia
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. A large meteor that triggered a spectacular daytime fireball over the southeastern U.S. may have survived its dramatic passage through Earth's atmosphere to punch through the roof of a Georgia home. The fireball was spotted over the southeastern U.S. at 12:25 EDT on Friday, (1625 GMT), visibly flaring as the extreme heat of atmospheric friction overwhelmed the ancient chunk of solar system debris. Its descent was bright enough to be seen by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAAs) GOES-19 Earth observation satellite, using an instrument designed to map flashes of lightning from orbit. "Daylight fireballs are rare in that it takes a large object (larger than a beachball compared to your normal pea-sized meteor) to be bright enough to be seen during the day," said Robert Lunsford of the American Meteor Association in an email to "We probably only average one per month worldwide, so perhaps one out of every 3,000 reports occurs during the day." The meteor was first spotted 48 miles (77 kilometers) above the town of Oxford, Georgia travelling at around 30,000 mph (48,000 km/h), according to NASA Meteoroid Environment Office lead Bill Cooke, via CBS News. Lunsford noted that the fireball may have been associated with the daylight beta Taurid shower, which peaks in late June as Earth passes through the trail of cosmic debris shed by the ancient solar system comet 2P/Encke. Footage of the event led many to speculate that fragments of the meteor may have survived its bruising passage through Earth's atmosphere. The hours that followed saw photos circulate online purporting to show the damage that a fragment of the meteorite caused when it smashed through the roof of a home in Henry County, Georgia. "Being much larger than your average meteor also means that it has a better chance of producing fragments on the ground," explained Lunsford "We look for reports of sound such as thunder or sonic booms to have confidence that fragments of the original fireball survived down to the lower atmosphere and perhaps all the way to the ground. Therefore the photograph of the hole in the roof is probably associated with this fireball." If verified, the Georgia meteorite certainly wouldn't represent the first time that a daylight beta Daylight Taurid left a mark on our planet. Lunsford noted that a particularly large meteor that some scientists believe to be associated with the annual shower detonated in a powerful airburst 6 miles (9.6 kilometers) over Russian Siberia in June 1908. The force of the explosion sparked massive forest fires and flattened roughly 80 million trees in what has since become known as the 'Tunguska Event'. Editor's Note: If you capture a photo or video footage of a meteor and want to share it with readers, then please send it, along with your name, comments, and details of your experience to spacephotos@
