There’s a space double feature in store for rocket fans today, with two launches to some very different places off Earth. Here’s how to watch them online.
New research suggests that the surface of Venus is busy, but it may take new missions to our “sibling” planet to confirm this.
Our solar system is a surprisingly crowded place. This incredible map shows the 18,000 asteroids, comets, planets, and moons orbiting the Sun.
O.o!
A mind-expanding and funny trip to the edge of mathematics
How big is the universe? How many numbers are there? And is infinity + 1 is the same as 1 + infinity? Such questions occur to young children and our greatest minds. And they are all the same question: What is infinity? In Beyond Infinity, Eugenia Cheng takes us on a staggering journey from elemental math to its loftiest abstractions. Along the way, she considers how to use a chessboard to plan a worldwide dinner party, how to make a chicken-sandwich sandwich, and how to create infinite cookies from a finite ball of dough. Beyond Infinity shows how one little symbol holds the biggest idea of all.
Continue reading “Beyond Infinity: An Expedition to the Outer Limits of Mathematics” »
Get ready for the launch of NASA and ESA’s Solar Orbiter, the spacecraft that will transform what we know about the Sun.
No, these are not pictures of caramel corn—they’re the new close-ups of the sun, taken by the largest solar telescope ever built, and they’re what the Internet has been abuzz about for a week. The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) is able to capture imagery three times more detailed than anything we’ve seen before. What we’re looking at here in this video are huge bubbling cells as big as Texas, transferring heat from the sun’s interior to its surface, but the telescope can also resolve tiny features as small as Manhattan Island within the cells!
The DKIST is about 13 feet wide and has a better-than-bird’s-eye-view at 10,000 feet above sea-level on the summit of Haleakala, a massive shield volcano on Hawaii’s island Maui. The area covered in this image is about 22,600 miles by 22,600 miles, but the cell-like structures shown are about the size of Texas.
This is only the first time it’s been used so far, and scientists are hoping that in the future it will be helpful in predicting solar weather. Scientists still have a lot of questions about the dynamical processes in the sun and space weather is a focus that can have significant impact on the everyday individual. Space weather has a huge influence on our air travel and satellite communication, sometimes causing power outages and system failures, and our technology has only given us about 48 minutes’ notice until now. The DKIST will help us predict solar flares 48 hours in advance and understand space weather like we never have before.
Boeing is considering another test flight for its CST-100 Starliner commercial crew spacecraft amid concerns from a NASA safety panel about its first flight.
Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft launched on Dec. 20, but was unable to dock with the International Space Station as planned because it ended up in the wrong orbit. But of growing concern now are two software problems that were uncovered after the flight was complete.
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O’Neill Cylinders space stations are examples of large rotating habitats able to be constructed in space in which people and even a complex ecology might be transplanted. But what would it be like living in one and how would civilizations based inside them in the future tend to operate?
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Advancements in robotics are continually taking place in the fields of space exploration, health care, public safety, entertainment, defense, and more. These machines—some fully autonomous, some requiring human input—extend our grasp, enhance our capabilities, and travel as our surrogates to places too dangerous or difficult for us to go. Gathered here are recent images of robotic technology, including a machine built to draw portraits, battle robots, a dance performance, an autonomous mobile vending machine, an art installation, an agri-bot, a robotic priest, a Mars rover, a grocery-store bot, and much more.
