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NASA will stream its next astronaut launch at 10:53PM ET tonight.

NASA’s Crew-8 mission, comprised of US astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, is set to fly to the International Space Station, where they’ll serve a six month stint as flight engineers.

Weather halted yesterday’s planned takeoff from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA writes on Crew-8’s mission blog that after launch, video coverage will stop until about 1AM ET on March 5th.


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Re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere in 4K.

Varda Space Industries captured its W-1 capsule’s descent from low-earth orbit for the rest of us to watch in 4K on YouTube. Ars Technica has a thorough write-up about the mission.

Varda’s clip isn’t quite as dramatic as the 25-minute Artemis I reentry video you can download from NASA, but the clarity makes it a sight to behold.


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The Odysseus lunar lander is lying on its side.

During a NASA press conference Friday evening, Intuitive Machines co-founder and CEO Steve Altemus showed the attitude of its lunar lander, the first from the US to reach the Moon’s surface in over 50 years.

As Swapna Krishna explains, they believe it tipped over after catching a foot on the surface while landing, but fortunately, it’s still getting sunlight to power the battery. Plans for the coming days include deploying a CubeSat it’s carrying called EagleCam to take photos from the surface.


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Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lander is on the Moon.

After a stressful few minutes of waiting beyond the estimated 6:24PM ET touchdown, the mission director said, “...we can confirm, without a doubt, our equipment is on the surface of the Moon, and we are transmitting.”


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Is this the end for NASA’s Voyager 1 probe?

NASA engineers told Space that “effectively, the call between the spacecraft and the Earth was still connected” after its transmissions stopped making sense last year, “but Voyager’s ‘voice’ was replaced with a monotonous dial tone.”

The scientists are reportedly holding out hope they can fix it, but if they aren’t able to, that would leave Voyager 2 as humanity’s only still-communicating spacecraft in interstellar space.


Here’s the final sample material from the Bennu asteroid.

After the sample was returned last year and NASA scientists went through some tribulation to break into the canister containing it, they say they gathered 121.6 grams of asteroid bits from Bennu.

NASA had hoped to gather at least 60 grams of material from the asteroid when its OSIRIS-REx mission craft punched its surface in 2020.


A picture of eight triangular sample trays, the two right-middle ones perhaps filled with a quarter of that, the bottom left two far less so, and the remaining one with only a few bits of material.
NASA’s final Bennu asteroid sample.
Image: Erika Blumenfeld & Joseph Aebersold / NASA
Jupiter’s volcano-laden moon captured in photos from NASA’s Juno mission

NASA released some captivating shots of Io, one of Jupiter’s four Galilean moons, from the Juno space probe. The spacecraft came within 930 miles of the moon’s surface on Saturday.

Io has roughly 400 active volcanoes and is the most volcanically active known body in the solar system. Scientific American noted that the volcanoes look like “dark pits” in the new images.


A close-up shot of Jupiter’s volcanic moon.
NASA
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Here lies Ingenuity, 2021 – 2024.

NASA’s Mars helicopter-that-could logged 67 more flights than the five it was originally intended to make in its almost three years on Mars before its little chopper blades gave out.

Gizmodo pointed to this lonesome digital zoom of the copter, resting on a sand dune on the red planet, created by visual design student Simeon Schmauß from a panorama he made from set of six NASA images (NASA later posted one of its own).

So long, Ingenuity. You did great, buddy.


Check out NASA’s “virtual flyby” of Jupiter moon Io.

NASA started its livestream at 11:30AM ET as its Juno spacecraft began flying by the volcanic moon. During the livestream, NASA has been answering viewer questions about the mission.

Sadly, it’s ending as I type this, but you can rewatch it here.


NASA caught a glimpse of Japan’s “Moon Sniper” lander after it landed.

The US space agency published the below images (presented in a gallery) showing its appearance on the Moon, as seen by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter from roughly 50 miles above the surface on January 24th.

The Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) made Japan the fifth nation to make a soft landing on the Moon, although an unfortunate malfunction rendered it without power in a matter of hours.


A gif showing the appearance of Japan’s SLIM lander.

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Japan’s “Moon Sniper” appears.
Image: NASA
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NASA’s Mars Helicopter has made its final flight.

The Ingenuity helicopter mission achieved powered flight on another world, brought Zigbee and Linux to Mars, and survived close calls, lasting 33 times longer than originally planned.

But on Thursday, NASA officials said that after a loss of communication and rough landing last week its rotor blades are too damaged to fly again. The Perseverance rover that brought it to Mars is too far away to get a picture, but this picture shows the shadow of a broken blade on the Mars terrain.


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These iconic Mars rovers bounced into action 20 years ago.

In 2004, NASA’s solar-powered Spirit and Opportunity rovers landed on the Red Planet’s surface on January 3rd and January 24th, respectively, with their touchdown softened by multiple bounces on giant airbags. Both rovers easily surpassed their three-month lifespan: Spirit lost contact in 2010, while Opportunity made it to 2019 — traveling 28 miles during its almost 15 years in operation.

Here’s NASA’s tribute to those very ambitious missions.


Here’s what NASA brought back from the Bennu asteroid.

The agency was finally able to take a picture of the charcoal-like space gravel of the Bennu asteroid sample after getting the canister’s last two stubborn screws out.

The picture presented here is nowhere near as interesting as the detailed and very zoomable full-res download you can grab from NASA’s site, though.


A picture of the Bennu asteroid sample.
The first asteroid sample ever brought back to Earth.
Image: NASA
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NASA is back in touch with the Mars Ingenuity helicopter.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) says it reestablished contact by having the Perseverance rover “perform long-duration listening sessions for Ingenuity’s signal.” The agency had lost contact with Ingenuity on Thursday, just as it was ending its 72nd Mars flight.

It’s good news for the bots, which are part of the Mars Sample Return mission that’s been beset by budget cuts and layoffs at JPL.


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NASA lost contact with its Mars helicopter.

The Ingenuity helicopter, which has been fluttering around the red planet for almost three years now, fell out of contact with Perseverance, the rover that brought it to the planet (and that it communicates with using Zigbee!).

NASA wrote yesterday that the flight, its 72nd, was a test of its systems after it was forced to land it early during its previous flight. The agency is working toward reestablishing contact.

While we wait, here’s a recent video of the helicopter in action.


The Peregrine Moon lander made it to lunar distance.

Astrobotic, the company that makes the lander, published an update Friday saying the lander had traversed 238,000 miles, putting it as far from the Earth as our Moon.

Peregrine’s post-launch propulsion malfunction means it’s not actually on the lunar surface as planned. Astrobotic wrote yesterday that the lander was “about 242,000 miles” out, and should return to “likely burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere.”


A graphic showing the Peregrine lander’s trajectory and position as of Friday, relative to the moon, with a curved line of dashes representing the moon’s path and another showing the lander’s expected trajectory back toward Earth.
Where the Peregrine lander was and where it wasn’t.
Image: Astrobotic
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NASA has freed the Bennu asteroid sample after three months of trying.

After its successful OSIRIS-REx mission to set an unmanned craft down on and retrieve a sample from the Bennu asteroid, two stubborn screws kept NASA’s scientists out of the canister. Now the screws are out, and there’s video to prove it.

The US space agency says it will release a catalog of the sample to scientists this spring.


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It’s official: The Peregrine Moon lander won’t make its landing.

Its maker, Astrobotic, said in an update today that it’s lost too much propellant to make it to the Moon because of a malfunction with its propulsion system that occurred after it separated from its launch vehicle.

The company says it can still operate the craft and will gather data for its next attempt with its Griffin lander.


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The first private US mission to the Moon is leaking fuel.

Today’s successful launch of the NASA-funded Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander might have made it the US’ first lunar touchdown since 1972. But an “anomaly” kept Peregrine from properly orienting after separating from the launcher, reported The New York Times.

“The team developed and executed an improvised maneuver to reorient toward the Sun,” the company stated in a post, before admitting a propulsion system failure may put the Moon out of reach.


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Remains of Star Trek legends voyage towards their final frontier.

Icons from the original series are “boldly going” into deep space for a permanent space burial — including show creator Gene Roddenberry, his wife Majel (Christine Chapel), Nichelle Nichols (Nyota Uhura), DeForest Kelley (Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy), and James Doohan (Montgomery “Scotty” Scot).

Their remains are aboard the ULA’s Vulcan Centaur rocket that successfully launched at 2:18AM ET last night.


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NASA has a 2024 space trailer.

It’s no MCU flick, but it runs down more than 15 missions, experiments, and big events to keep an eye out for next year. From Artemis, to Quesst, to a total eclipse in North America on April 8th, here’s your preview (also available as 1080p download).


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NASA streamed a cat video from deep space.

Behold the glory of Taters, who stars in an ultra-high definition video that was beamed to Earth from 19 million miles away. Oh, and the video was streamed via laser. Awesome.


NASA posted a nice picture of Uranus.

The James Webb Space Telescope grabbed this infrared photo of Uranus’ north polar cap, nine of its moons, and its rings, including “the extremely faint and diffuse” Zeta ring.

NASA said in a post today that the picture is a combination of long and short exposures to correct for the gas giant’s fast rotation.


A solar flare that hit the Earth on Thursday was “likely” one of the largest ever recorded.

That’s according to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, which said pilots reported radio interference across the United States between noon and 2PM ET on December 14th.

The current solar cycle is stronger than expected, making disruptions like this more likely, but the NOAA forecasts an October 2024 peak, a year earlier than originally predicted.

Anyway, here’s a NASA GIF of the eruption.


A GIF showing the solar flare eruption.
The solar flare in beautiful ultraviolet.
GIF: NASA
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The trouble with Hubble.

It’s down to just three of the six gyroscopes NASA upgraded it with in 2009 — and one of those is flaking out. According to Ars Technica, the agency’s engineers figured out a way to keep the Hubble going on a single gyro.

In this one-gyro mode, Hubble’s control system would receive inputs from the single gyroscope in combination with magnetometers, Sun sensors, and star trackers.

Unfortunately, it’s also got issues with one of its guidance sensors, and its orbit is decaying, putting it a little over a decade from falling out of the sky. NASA and SpaceX have studied whether they can push it farther out again.


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NASA gets closer to laser-based deep space communication.

The Psyche spacecraft that’s heading to study a metal asteroid has successfully test-fired a communications laser back at the Earth from nearly 10 million miles away — a first for NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) system.

NASA said in its announcement that the DSOC test is “one of many critical DSOC milestones” that will make higher throughput communication possible ahead of an eventual manned Mars mission.


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NASA’s Mars robots are in conjunction junction.

NASA has stopped talking to the Mars robots for two weeks. Engadget pointed to NASA’s blog about solar conjunction, a biennial occurrence where the Sun sits between Mars and Earth.

NASA says coronal gasses can corrupt signals NASA sends to its automated explorers, so the agency is playing it safe. In the meantime, the two rovers and the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter will continue collecting data while parked on the surface.


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NASA Plus is live now.

NASA’s free, ad-free, and subscription-free streaming service has officially launched. I’m personally a fan of the “Space Out” series tagged under “NASA & Chill,” which are 30-minute shows featuring incredible shots of planets and space stuff all backed by chill music.


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NASA Plus starts streaming tomorrow.

If you’re eager for NASA-produced documentaries and original series or even some good old-fashioned live launch coverage, NASA Plus, which was announced in July, goes live tomorrow, as Space reminds us.

Since it’s NASA, it’s like free ad-supported TV, aka FAST TV, but instead of ads, it’s paid for by your taxes.

...FTST TV? Anyway, here’s a trailer.