technical updates

Despite our love for little "Baby Yoda", " The Mandalorian and Grogu " wasn't the thrilling "Star Wars" feature film to drag fans back to theaters when it dropped back in May. It wasn't bad, but it felt more like a TV special than a cinematic event. But now the $166 million space opera — recruited from the Disney+ series that ran for three seasons from 2019-2023 — is now about to enter Earth orbit and finally land in the streaming sphere when it hits Disney+ starting Sept. 2, 2026. Will this be the way? Directed by Jon Favreau and starring Pedro Pascal as the laconic bounty hunter clad in his stylish Beskar armor and also featuring that pint-sized alien dynamo formally known as Baby Yoda, "The Mandalorian and Grogu" was the first big-screen "Star Wars" movie in seven years since 2019's " Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker ." C...

Astronomers have discovered that a jet of plasma erupting from a distant supermassive black hole at near-light-speed is being gravitationally lensed by an unseen clump of dark matter. The discovery could tell us about the source of cosmic "ghost" particles called neutrinos. The supermassive black hole in question is powering a type of quasar called a blazar. All quasars involve supermassive black holes surrounded by vast quantities of material upon which the black holes feed. Material that isn't consumed by these feasting cosmic titans is channeled to the poles of the black holes, from where it is blasted out as plasma jets. A blazar differs from quasars in general because the jets it blasts out are directed at Earth. Blazars, like the one central to this study, designated PKS 2233-148, have long been proposed to be the cosmic particle accelerators that blast out neutrinos. Neutr...

Astronomers have discovered an unusually massive, dense exoplanet that challenges conventional ideas about how rocky planets form. Called GJ 523b, the exoplanet is about 2.5 times wider than Earth but packs roughly 23 times our planet's mass into that relatively compact size. Worlds this large and dense are sometimes referred to as "mega-Earths," an informal term for unusually massive, predominantly rocky planets. GJ 523b's high density suggests it contains relatively little atmosphere despite being large enough that astronomers would normally expect it to have accumulated a substantial gaseous envelope, according to a statement from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. "This isn't what we expected at all," Max Kroft, lead author of the study, said in the statement . "Dense planets like this aren't uncommon, but they're usually small rocky planets sim...

China just notched another big spaceflight milestone. The Beijing startup LandSpace successfully landed the first stage of its Zhuque-3 rocket this evening (Aug. 18), becoming the first Chinese company ever to do so during an orbital launch. It was just the second Chinese orbital rocket touchdown overall. The first was pulled of on July 10 by a Long March 10B , which is built by the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC). The Long March 10B had some help returning to Earth, settling softly into a net-like device affixed to a ship at sea. But Zhuque-3 came down on terra firma and stayed upright thanks to a set of landing legs, like those sported by SpaceX 's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket. "This mission marks China's first-ever successful recovery attempt of the first stage of an orbital-class launch vehicle using landing legs, and China's first success...

Two astronauts — including the first French woman in history to perform a spacewalk — worked outside of the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday (Aug 18), becoming temporary TV repairpersons. Just like what frequently happens on Earth, the work required more time than the "appointment" allowed, requiring a second visit to be scheduled. NASA astronaut Anil Menon and ESA ( European Space Agency ) astronaut Sophie Adenot were tasked with the removal and replacement of a Space-to-Ground antenna that since November had ceased being able to track NASA's data relay satellites , rendering it unusable. A second antenna has been in use since, continuing the transmission of critical data and enabling high-speed communications with Mission Control Houston. Spacewalk planners had allocated about six and a half hours for the work to be completed. The two Expedition 75 crewmates were succ...

The Hubble Space Telescope has discovered evidence that our galaxy experienced a significant collision and merger with a dwarf galaxy 11.8 billion years ago. Mergers between galaxies are one of the main ways in which galaxies can grow. However, while we can witness mergers taking place in other galaxies, figuring out our Milky Way galaxy's history requires painstaking detective work. Even now, the story is only partly known. "Our home is the Milky Way galaxy, but we do not know how our house was built," Davide Massari of the Astrophysics and Space Science Observatory of Bologna in Italy said in a statement . Massari is lead author of a paper describing the discovery of an ancient galactic merger. "In this paper we discover where the first significant batch of bricks came from: a dwarf galaxy that we call LKH." LKH stands for Low-energy–Kraken–Heracles, which is an obtus...