technical updates

NASA is picking up the pace on its Artemis III mission preparations, pressing forward on multiple fronts to assemble launch vehicle hardware and beginning routine simulations inside Artemis mission control. The agency is "full steam ahead," according to a July 13 NASA update . Across Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida, components of Artemis III's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket are coming together, undergoing tests and awaiting transportation for final integration ahead of next year's launch. NASA is targeting mid-to-late 2027 for Artemis III, which will launch four astronauts into low Earth orbit (LEO) aboard the Orion spacecraft . It will be the second crewed mission of NASA's Artemis program , which aims to establish a permanent human presence on the moon . Artemis III will be a critical stepping stone in NASA's lunar landing architecture, despite the mission n...

Rocket Lab has completed a major qualification test for its formidable Archimedes engine, which will power the company's next-gen Neutron launch vehicle. As Rocket Lab continues with regular launches of its workhorse small-lift Electron rocket , development of Neutron has carried on in the background, progressing toward a possible debut later this year. The company recently completed a full-duration burn of a second-stage Archimedes, paving the way for integration with Neutron in the coming months. The burn took place at Rocket Lab's Archimedes Test Complex, housed at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. The full-duration test aimed to simulate flight-like requirements and lasted just under 5.5 minutes. "What a thing of beauty," the company said in a July 13 social media post announcing the success, calling it a "critical preparation for Neutron's first flight...

America and Hollywood might feel like the natural home of sci-fi, but Britain has quite the science fiction pedigree of its own. Doctor Who is obviously our great nation's most famous sci-fi export, standing tall amongst the other giants of the genre, but it's far from our only contribution. From television to literature, there is a history of some truly great and groundbreaking science fiction coming from this loose collection of islands. So, make yourself a nice cup of tea and have a seat while we break down the UK’s 10 best science fiction shows of all time (in no particular order). 1. Doctor Who (Image credit: BBC) Release date: November 23, 1963 | Seasons: 41 | Cast: William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Paul McGann, Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, Matt Smith, Peter Capaldi, Jodie Whittaker, Ncuti Gatwa (...

A space rock exploded through a bedroom ceiling in New Jersey, and scientists have now traced its origins to a strange, briny asteroid once visited by a NASA mission. Two years ago on July 16, 2024 in the middle of the afternoon, a sonic boom shook New York City as a fireball streaked through the sky. The culprit? A rock the size of a heavy airline bag weighing roughly 110 pounds (50 kilograms). The meteorite hurtled over the east coast before crash-landing in a house in Hillsborough, New Jersey where the homeowner found it, reeking of sulfur. In studying this meteorite, scientists think that it could have come from the surface of an asteroid where liquid saltwater could have rested, possibly providing clues to life's origins on Earth. "In a way, you can think of it as smelling the origins of life's atmosphere," lead author and meteor astronomer Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Ins...

Astronomers have spotted four dead star white dwarf stars playing a game of cosmic hide-and-seek, all four of which were hiding in the glares of red dwarf companion stars. This marks the first detection of white dwarfs existing in double star systems in our cosmic backyard. The white dwarfs are all located within around 65 light-years of Earth, and one of them is number nine in the top 10 closest white dwarfs to the solar system. White dwarfs are the type of stellar remnants left behind when stars around the size of the sun run out of fuel needed for nuclear fusion . This leads to their cores collapsing. The lack of fusion also means these stellar remnants cool and become dim. Thus, the light of much larger and brighter red dwarf stars is incredibly effective at hiding white dwarfs. "Nearby isolated white dwarfs are usually easy to find, but we couldn't see these four stars directly in...

The first of 10,000 missing black holes in the Omega Centauri globular cluster has been found thanks to teamwork by the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes. The two observatories discovered the black hole after watching a star orbiting around something massive but dark, and which therefore could not be seen. The Hubble data ran from 2003 to 2023, and the James Webb Space Telescope picked up after that to help refine the measurements. Astronomers used the space telescopes to focus on a particular star in a binary system that appeared to be home to another, dark object called oMEGACat BH-2. Previous studies had suggested that the dark object was a neutron star . However, the new results are conclusive: the object has a mass 4.46 times that of the sun . This is too massive to be a neutron star, so it must therefore be a black hole. Omega Centauri is the most massive of our Milky Way galaxy ...