Cosmic Log
NASA rolled the giant rocket that’s slated to launch four astronauts on a round-the-moon trip back to its garage today to troubleshoot a problem with its helium pressurization system.
The Space Launch System rocket, topped by an Orion crew capsule, returned to the 52-story Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center in Florida at about 8 p.m. ET (5 p.m. PT), NASA said. It took more than 10 hours for NASA’s crawler-transporter to make the 4-mile trip from Launch Complex 39B.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says he’s making space-based artificial intelligence the “immediate focus” of a newly expanded company that not only builds rockets and satellites, but also controls xAI’s generative-AI software and the X social-media platform.
That’s the upshot of today’s announcement that SpaceX has acquired xAI. The Information quoted unnamed sources as saying that xAI was valued at $250 billion, while SpaceX’s value was set at a trillion dollars. That would make SpaceX the most valuable private company in the world — but because Musk held a controlling interest in both companies, those valuations may be somewhat subjective.
Ross Gerber, an investment adviser who tracks Musk’s business dealings, quipped on X that the world’s richest person decided to go ahead with the acquisition after “a short negotiation with himself.”
Musk said the combination of SpaceX and xAI would facilitate the creation of a new constellation of orbital data centers. SpaceX is already seeking approval from the Federal Communications Commission to put up to a million satellites in low Earth orbit for such a constellation.
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture sent six more people on a brief suborbital space trip today — including the director of Blue Origin’s New Shepard launch operations and training team.
The flight, known as NS-38, was Blue Origin’s 38th New Shepard mission overall, and the 17th mission that carried people.
Laura Stiles, who joined Blue Origin in 2013, was a late addition to the NS-36 crew. She filled a seat that was left open when one of the would-be spacefliers, Andrew Yaffe, had to bow out due to illness. Blue Origin said Yaffe will fly on a future New Shepard mission.
This was Stiles’ first trip to space, but she’s taken on several other roles associated with the New Shepard suborbital space program, including serving as a flight controller, a crew communicator and a trainer.
Stiles laughed for joy as she emerged from the New Shepard crew capsule at the end of the ride.
“There are so many people who have worked so hard for so many years with all their heart, all their soul, and I got to be there for everybody today,” she said. “The ride is incredible … We taught this training so many times, and it was so like … oh my God! The g’s, and the movement, and going through the clouds, and the Earth against the blackness. … We saw the moon, and things you can’t have pictured or imagined what it would be like to be up there.”
Today’s 10-minute flight was conducted at Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in West Texas. It followed Blue Origin’s standard procedure, with liftoff coming at 10:25 a.m. CT (8:25 a.m. PT). The reusable New Shepard booster sent the crew capsule to a height of 346,722 feet (65.7 miles or 105.7 kilometers) and then flew itself back to a landing pad.
Meanwhile, the crew got out of their seats to float in zero gravity and look out the windows at the black sky of space and the Earth below. They got back in their seats for a parachute-aided descent that ended with touchdown at 10:36 a.m. CT (8:36 a.m. PT).
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture sent six more people on a brief suborbital space trip today aboard a New Shepard rocket ship. The flight, known as NS-36, was Blue Origin’s 36th New Shepard mission and the 15th crewed flight.
Today’s 10-minute flight was conducted at Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in West Texas. It followed Blue Origin’s standard procedure, with liftoff coming at 8:40 a.m. CT (6:40 a.m. PT). The reusable booster sent the crew capsule to a height of 65.7 miles (346,791 feet, or 106 kilometers), and then flew itself back to a landing pad.
Meanwhile, the crew got out of their seats to float in zero gravity and look out the windows at the black sky of space and the Earth below. They got back in their seats for a parachute-aided descent that ended with touchdown at 8:50 a.m. CT (6:50 a.m. PT).
Astronomers say they’ve spotted the third interstellar object to be detected flying through our solar system. The object — initially known as A11pl3Z and now designated 3I/ATLAS — was discovered on July 1 by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, or ATLAS.
Early indications are that the 3I/ATLAS is behaving like a comet, and that it may be up to 12 miles (20 kilometers) wide. But don’t panic: This object has no chance of hitting Earth.
3I/ATLAS is currently about 416 million miles from the sun and zooming across the solar system at 130,000 mph. Its projected path is being determined more precisely through follow-up observations and analysis, including a review of “precovery” telescope images that recorded the object’s position but went unnoticed until the ATLAS astronomers reported their find.
The analysis suggests the object will have a close encounter with Mars and swing past the sun in October. Earth will be on the other side of the sun, which rules out making up-close observations or sending a probe. David Rankin, an astronomer with the Catalina Sky Survey, said in a series of Bluesky postings that the path of 3I/ATLAS through the solar system appears to have the highest eccentricity ever found.
Astrophysicists say they’ve identified an object beyond the orbit of Neptune that’s likely to qualify as a dwarf planet, alongside other trans-Neptunian objects including Pluto, the erstwhile “ninth planet.”
The discovery of 2017 OF201 touches upon another ninth-planet controversy: namely, whether there’s a large planet nicknamed Planet 9 or Planet XÂ lurking somewhere on the edges of the solar system.
It’s looking more and more as if dark energy, the mysterious factor that scientists say is behind the accelerating expansion of the universe, isn’t as constant as they once thought.
The latest findings from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, or DESI, don’t quite yet come up to the level of a confirmed discovery, but they’re leading scientists to rethink their views on the evolution of the universe — and how it might end.
Readings from DESI’s Data Release 2, published on March 19, suggest dark energy’s influence isn’t as strong as it used to be. Scientists had thought that the universe’s endless expansion would eventually lead to a state of cosmic stasis known as the “Big Chill.” But if dark energy fizzles out, billions or trillions of years from now, the universe may fall back on itself and end up in a reverse Big Bang, or “Big Crunch.”
The first total lunar eclipse since 2022 will turn the full moon an eerie shade of red on the night of March 13-14 — but your chances of seeing it with your own eyes will depend on where you are.
North Americans should have great seats for the eclipse this time around. The key phases of the show, from the time the moon begins to enter the darkest part of Earth’s shadow to the time it leaves, should be visible to the entire continent.
But add some emphasis to the word “should.” In order to see the darkened moon with your own eyes, the skies have to be clear.
Three bodies? No problem!
The “three-body problem” has traditionally referred to the devilishly tricky challenge of working out the trajectories of three objects orbiting each other in space. The concept has inspired a sci-fi trilogy about an alien invasion, plus a Netflix series based on the novels.
In the books and in the TV show, the alien invaders are coming from the Alpha Centauri star system — where three stars are gravitationally bound to each other just a little more than 4 light-years away from us. But we don’t have to look that far away to find a three-body system.
Back in 2020, astronomers reported the detection of a trio of celestial objects in the Kuiper Belt, the broad ring of icy material at our solar system’s edge — and now scientists analyzing data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the W.M. Keck Observatory say they may have come across the Kuiper Belt’s second three-body system.
A report about the system, known as Altjira, was published today in The Planetary Science Journal.
“The universe is filled with a range of three-body systems, including the closest stars to Earth, the Alpha Centauri star system, and we’re finding that the Kuiper Belt may be no exception,” study lead author Maia Nelsen, a physics and astronomy graduate of Brigham Young University, said in a NASA news release.
Over the course of more than a decade, astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to gather up 2.5 billion pixels’ worth of imagery focusing on the Andromeda galaxy — and the results could provide clues to the evolutionary history of our galaxy’s celestial neighbor.
The panoramic mosaic of the Andromeda galaxy was unveiled last week in Maryland at the winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society, and in an accompanying research paper published in The Astrophysical Journal.
It’s not just a pretty picture. Hubble was able to resolve more than 200 million of the galaxy’s stars. “This detailed look at the resolved stars will help us piece together the galaxy’s past merger and interaction history,” University of Washington astronomer Benjamin Williams, principal investigator for the project, said in a news release.