NASA Ends Moon Mission, Rover Marks 13 Years Lunar Trailblazer Lost: NASA confirmed it has formally ended the Lunar Trailblazer mission after months of silence from the small lunar orbiter nasa.gov. Launched as a low-cost attempt to map water on the Moon, the cubesat fell mute a day after its Feb. 26 liftoff and drifted…
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Rapid-Fire Launches Span US, Europe, and Australia SpaceX’s Starlink Doubleheader: SpaceX achieved two back-to-back Falcon 9 launches in under 24 hours, bolstering its Starlink internet constellation. Early Saturday morning (July 26) a Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida at 5:01 a.m. EDT carrying 28 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit space.com. Less than a day…
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NASA in Crisis: Budget Cuts, Mass Resignations, and a Reality TV Administrator The U.S. space agency NASA faces an unprecedented leadership and workforce crisis as deep budget cuts threaten its future missions. Over 2,000 senior-level employees have resigned amid uncertainty, with many citing a lack of direction and the specter of a 25% funding reduction.…
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Background: The Promise of Space-Based Solar Power (SBSP) Space-based solar power (SBSP) is the ambitious concept of harvesting solar energy in space and beaming it down to Earth. The idea dates back to 1968, when engineer Peter Glaser first proposed placing giant satellites in orbit to collect sunlight and transmit power wirelessly to Earth space.com.…
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Background: A Long-Defunct NASA Satellite (Relay 2) Relay 2 is an experimental communications satellite NASA launched on January 21, 1964, as part of the early Relay programen.wikipedia.org. Similar in design to its predecessor Relay 1, this satellite was built by RCA and tasked with relaying television signals and studying Earth’s radiation beltsen.wikipedia.or en.wikipedia.org. After a successful launch atop…
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Astronomers were stunned when a 1960s NASA satellite suddenly “blinked” to life. On 13 June 2024, the Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope in Western Australia detected an extraordinarily brief yet intense radio pulse lasting <30 nanoseconds and peaking at over 300,000 Jy chron.com n2yo.com. By tracing the signal in Earth’s vicinity (within ~12,400 miles…
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The Sun is our life-giving star – a 4.6-billion-year-old solar inferno that governs Earth’s climate and space environment. Understanding the Sun is not only vital for fundamental science, but also for protecting modern technology and astronauts from space weather (solar storms that can disrupt satellites and power grids) nasa.gov nasa.gov. Yet many solar mysteries endure,…
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