Lifeboat Foundation

NASA astronaut Frank Rubio is finishing up the longest single flight in U.S. space history at 371 days.

Using snapshots taken over 20 years with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have learned important new details about an eruption from Eta Carinae witnessed on Earth in the mid-19th century.

Chandra data spanning decades has been combined into a new movie that contains frames of Eta Carinae from 1999, 2003, 2009, 2014, and 2020. Astronomers used the Chandra observations, along with data from ESA’s (European Space Agency’s) XMM-Newton, to watch as the stellar eruption from 180 years ago continues to expand into space at speeds up to 4.5 million miles per hour. The new insights gleaned from Eta Carinae show how different space observatories can work together to help us understand changes in the universe that unfold on human timescales.

Continue reading “NASA’s Chandra rewinds story of great eruption of the 1840s” »

Thousands of disk galaxies like our own Milky Way were spotted in the early universe, where they shouldn’t exist.

The Mars Ascent Vehicle will become the first rocket to launch from another planet for NASA and ESA’s Mars Sample Return mission.

NASA has released footage captured by its Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) team as they performed wind tunnel tests at the space agency’s historic Marshall Space Flight Center.

Continue reading “Watch NASA test solid rocket motors for first Mars rocket launch” »

NASA Celebrates Arrival of OSIRIS-REx and Bennu Asteroid Samples on Earth

In a historic moment that marks the culmination of a seven-year interstellar odyssey, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has successfully delivered its first precious cargo to Earth. The long-awaited rendezvous with the asteroid Bennu has yielded a treasure trove of samples that are now undergoing meticulous examination by scientists and researchers.

The momentous touchdown occurred on Sunday, September 24, at the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range. Subsequently, the valuable package was carefully hoisted onto a waiting helicopter before embarking on the final leg of its journey to a high-security clean room. Access to this pristine environment is strictly limited to a select group of six individuals.

Telegram, the popular messenger with 800 million monthly active users worldwide, is inching closer to adopting an ecosystem strategy that is reminiscent of WeChat’s super app approach. Certain aspects of the ecosystem will be decentralized with help from two heavyweights: Telegram’s crypto partner TON Foundation and WeChat’s owner Tencent.

Telegram has been working on a platform where third-party developers, from games to restaurants, can build mini apps to interact with users. In Telegram’s own words: “Developers can use JavaScript to create infinitely flexible interfaces that can be launched right inside Telegram — and can completely replace any website.”

To build out this super app platform, Telegram relies on a network of infrastructure partners both from the established tech world and the crypto space. Among them is The Open Network (TON) Foundation, which lays the blockchain groundwork for Telegram but operates as an independent organization.

In an exciting milestone for lunar scientists around the globe, India’s Chandrayaan-3 lander touched down 375 miles (600 km) from the south pole of the Moon on August 23, 2023.

In just under 14 Earth days, Chandrayaan-3 provided scientists with valuable new data and further inspiration to explore the Moon. And the Indian Space Research Organization has shared these initial results with the world.

Continue reading “Chandrayaan-3 Detects ‘Unexpected’ Levels of Sulfur on The Moon” »

The material can help scientists understand the origins of the Earth.

After years of anticipation and hard work by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security – Regolith Explorer) team, a capsule of rocks and dust collected from asteroid Bennu finally is on Earth. It landed at 8:52 a.m. MDT (10:52 a.m. EDT) on Sunday, in a targeted area of the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range near Salt Lake City.

Within an hour and a half, the capsule was transported by helicopter to a temporary clean room set up in a hangar on the training range, where it now is connected to a continuous flow of nitrogen.

Getting the sample under a “nitrogen purge,” as scientists call it, was one of the OSIRIS-REx team’s most critical tasks today. Nitrogen is a gas that doesn’t interact with most other chemicals, and a continuous flow of it into the sample container inside the capsule will keep out earthly contaminants to leave the sample pure for scientific analyses.