NASA’s CAPSTONE mission, which will chart a new orbit around the moon that will hopefully be used for a future crewed lunar space station, is underway after a successful launch on Tuesday morning. Rocket Lab’s Electron launch vehicle delivered the CAPSTONE satellite, which is roughly the size of a large microwave oven, to Earth orbit for step one of its lunar journey.
Very soon, humanity will get to view the deepest images of the universe that have ever been captured. In two weeks, the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) — NASA’s super expensive, super-powerful deep-space optical imager — will release its first full-color images, and agency officials today suggested that they could just be the beginning.
You know you’re living in the space age when a rocket hits the moon, and the industry as a whole points to the sky and, like an angry teacher holding up a paper airplane, asks “Who launched this?!” Truly, that is what occurred this week as an unidentified rocket stage (!) impacted the lunar surface, forming a new and interesting crater and leaving us all wondering how it’s possible to not know what happened.
Traditional face masks, including N95s and KN95s, offer protection against illness and infection but must be disposed of once they come in contact with viruses, thus generating significant plastic waste. So now, researchers have developed a simple method that would give N95 face masks antiviral and antibacterial properties, which could allow them to be worn for longer durations.
Researchers investigating the genetic make-up of the MonkeyPox virus have said the virus appears to have mutated far, far more than would normally be expected and has undergone a period of “accelerated evolution”. So far 50 new mutations of the MonkeyPox Virus have been found.
With Space X mission of launching rockets more than 60 times in 2022 and conducting three launches within 36 hours span last week, China is also continuing its quest to carry out more than 50 orbital launches this year with a pair of missions lifting off within just over 24 hours of each other.
They don’t call Jupiter “King of Planets” for nothing. It’s massive, really heavy, and now scientists think it ate chunks of other planets to get as big as it is.
That’s right, the gas giant named after Greek and Roman gods is thought to have absorbed a series of small “planetesimals” en route to claiming its place as the biggest planet in the solar system.
At Amazon’s Re: Mars conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday, the company demonstrated a feature that enables its Alexa voice assistant to emulate any voice. The feature, which is still in development, could be used to replicate a family member’s voice, even after they’ve died.
China’s Mars sample return mission aims to collect samples from the Red Planet and deliver them to Earth in 2031, or two years ahead of a NASA and ESA joint mission.
An enormous sunspot called AR3038, that has been doubling in size each day for the past three days is now facing Earth—meaning it could send a solar flare our way. Solar flares can disrupt radio communications and power grids on Earth.
Amazon said Monday it will begin to deliver products using Prime Air drones in Lockeford, California, later this year. It’s the first time the company plans to use drones for customer deliveries in the United States.
Following European Union lawmakers reaching a deal to force all smartphones and tablets to have USB-C charging ports by 2024, a trio of senate democrats is looking to implement a similar mandate in the US. As reported, these democrats have called on the US Commerce Department to follow the EU’s lead and “develop a strategy to require a common charging port across all mobile devices.”
