In the world’s first planetary defense technology demonstration, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) made history as it successfully slammed into an asteroid target on Monday. The first ‘attempt’ to move an asteroid in space, the probe tested a way to protect our planet from future hazards and potential impacts.
Source: Wikimedia Commons.
The Hayabusa 2 spacecraft dropped a capsule containing the samples — materials dating back to the beginnings of our solar system — into Earth’s atmosphere before continuing its journey to another asteroid.
TODAY NASA will make history but conducting the first ever asteroid redirection test!
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Enigmatic fast radio bursts come from some of the most extreme environments. A newly discovered one could come from a pairing of a powerful pulsar and a giant star.
Room service is unlikely to be part of the package, but Hilton has nevertheless agreed to help Voyager Space design the crew suites for a new space station.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) engineers have developed a battery-free, wireless underwater camera that’s powered by sound waves.
Scientists estimate that more than 95 percent of Earth’s oceans have never been observed, which means we have seen less of our planet’s ocean than we have the far side of the moon or the surface of Mars.
The high cost of powering an underwater camera for a long time, by tethering it to a research vessel or sending a ship to recharge its batteries, is a steep challenge preventing widespread undersea exploration.
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The James Webb Space Telescope continues to show off like that kid in high school who could juggle bowling pins. Though, this time, instead of peering…
Different missions are vying for a limited number of antennas. And DART and Artemis are running right up against each other.
Swirling around the planet’s equator, the rings of Saturn are an obvious indicator that the planet is spinning at a tilt. The belted gas giant rotates at a 26.7-degree angle relative to the plane in which it orbits the sun. Because Saturn’s tilt precesses, like a spinning top, at nearly the same rate as the orbit of its neighbor Neptune.
Neptune is the farthest planet from the sun. In our solar system, it is the fourth-largest planet by size, and third densest. It is named after the Roman god of the sea.
“I need to have the processes in place for rapid fielding and acceptance of these things, and that’s not getting a lot of traction right now,” Space RCO Director Kelly Hammett said Sept. 12 at the Air, Space and Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Md.
The Space RCO aims to develop the first few units of a defense system and then hand them off to Space Systems Command, the Space Force’s acquisition arm, to manage production. Hammett said his team is on track to deliver 10–12 projects over the next three years.
Because most of its programs are classified, the office has not revealed details on the technology and scope of its first deliveries. According to fiscal 2023 budget documents, the Space RCO is supporting an Air Force Research Laboratory effort to use solar energy to provide “logistically agile power” to forces on the ground. Its unclassified budget request included $36 million for that effort and about $9 million to support space capability studies.
Continue reading “Is Space Force moving fast enough for its Rapid Capabilities Office?” »
