Update for 11 a.m. ET: Blue Origin has successfully launched its New Shepard spacecraft on the NS-13 mission. Read our full story here. Original story Blue Origin will launch its New Shepard suborbital vehicle on an uncrewed test flight Tuesday morning (Oct. 13), and you can watch the liftoff live. New Shepard is scheduled to launch from Blue Origin’s West …
Black hole kills star by ‘spaghettification’ as telescopes watch, ,
Telescopes have captured the rare light flash from a dying star as it was ripped apart by a supermassive black hole. This rarely seen “tidal disruption event” — which creates spaghettification in stars as they stretch and stretch – is the closest such known event to happen, at only 215 million light-years from Earth. (For comparison, the nearest star system …
Mars Opposition 2020: How to See It and What to Expect, ,
Get ready to see the Red Planet up close this week: Mars reaches opposition with the sun on Oct. 13, 2020, offering the closest view of the planet until 2035. Mars and Earth both orbit the sun, but at different distances, and thus, different speeds. Every two years or so, Mars, Earth and the sun form a straight line during …
China’s Tianwen-1 Mars probe snaps epic deep-space selfie (photos), ,
China’s Tianwen-1 Mars probe is seen by a tiny camera ejected from the spacecraft in a photo captured 15 million miles from Earth. (Image credit: CNSA) China’s Tianwen-1 spacecraft has beamed home some deep-space selfies snapped by a small camera jettisoned during its journey to Mars. A small camera with wide-angle lenses on both sides was ejected from the outside …
Scientists call for serious study of ‘unidentified aerial phenomena’, ,
The U.S. Navy recently admitted that, indeed, strangely behaving objects caught on video by jet pilots over the years are genuine head-scratchers. There are eyewitness accounts not only from pilots but from radar operators and technicians, too. In August, the Navy established an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) Task Force to investigate the nature and origin of these odd sightings and …