technical updates

As the newest heavy hitter in orbital observatories continues the journey to its final destination, NASA has begun the process of switching the spacecraft on. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched on Aug. 30, and is on a three-month long trek to Lagrange point two (L2). L2 is a relatively idle orbital sweet spot almost a million miles from Earth that will allow Roman to remain on the planet's night side and keep the bright sun to its back. It's an optimal location for the telescope to operate its two primary instruments , the Wide Field Instrument (WFI) and its Coronagraph Instrument . Neither are ready to begin collecting science, and will undergo another month or so of calibrations and tests before Roman can begin its mission, but initial downlinks from the telescope indicate nominal readings on its components as NASA teams continue its commissioning. "This is a huge m...

The U.S. Space Force is opening up about its operation of orbital weapons, but not much beyond admitting that they exist. During a "State of the Space Force" address at the Air & Space Forces Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, on Tuesday (Sept. 15), Chief of Space Operations Gen. Douglas Schiess stated unequivocally that the Space Force uses active space -based weaponry to support United States national defense. “Let me be crystal clear: Today, Guardians operate on-orbit weapons that can defend the joint force against space-enabled attacks,” Schiess said, referring to the official name for Space Force personnel. Space is central to national security infrastructure and warfighting efforts, and serves a critical role in how the military communicates, navigates, conducts operations and tracks threats globally. It’s become an increasingly co...

We now have a launch date for Starship's most ambitious mission to date. SpaceX announced today (Sept. 15) that it's targeting Sept. 22 for the first orbital flight of Starship , the fully reusable megarocket that the company is developing to help humanity settle the moon, Mars and more. Liftoff, from SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas, will occur during a 75-minute window that opens at 8:15 a.m. EDT (1215 GMT and 7:15 a.m. local Texas time). You can watch it live here at Space.com when the time comes. Starship Die Cast Rocket Model Was $47.99 Now $39.99 on Amazon . Even if you can't see SpaceX's Starship in person, you can score a model of your own. Standing at 13.77 inches (35 cm), this is a 1:375 ratio of SpaceX's Starship as a desktop model. The materials here are alloy steel and it weighs just 225g. View Deal The upcoming flight will be the 14th overall for Sta...

Could we find alien technology embedded in moon dust? The bold idea, not yet peer-reviewed, suggests checking out the lunar surface for "microscopic technosignatures." The SETI Institute — or the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute — describes these technosignatures as "tiny engineered particles" that may have come from interstellar space before settling on the moon . The institute recently highlighted a paper on the topic, published on arxiv in August, and added the research is undergoing peer review for consideration in the International Journal of Astrobiology. The study is led by SETI Institute Affiliate Scientist Lewis Pinault. "The moon has been quietly accumulating material from space for billions of years, much of it likely billions of years older than the moon itself," said Pinault in a statement . "We're asking whether that ancien...

More than 60 years after surveys suggested a deep coral reef off Benin was probably dead, scientists have found it alive. Cameras revealed healthy-looking coral patches supporting multiple fish species more than 50 meters beneath the surface. The discovery suggests West Africa’s coastal waters may contain other overlooked reefs that have yet to be documented. from Latest Science News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/pbdXkNu

If this summer felt hotter than usual, you're not alone. As it turns out, this past summer was the hottest on record in the United States. This is the hottest that summer in the U.S. has been in at least 132 years. Specifically, the temperatures rose to 3 degrees Fahrenheit (1.67 degrees Celsius) above average, beating out the most recent record set in 2021 of 0.4 degrees F (0.22 degrees C) above average, according to a new report from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). And looking month-to-month, this was also the hottest August we've ever seen. The record-breaking season saw unmatched temperature highs across the contiguous U.S. (all of the adjoining states, excluding Alaska and Hawaii which just aren't a part of this record) from June through August. But scorching temperatures aren't all that this new record reveals, as this summer was also one of the drie...

It has now been just over a year since the comet 3I/ATLAS first captured the world's attention as the third known object to fly through our solar system from beyond. Astronomers are still learning new things about where exactly it came from. For the first time ever, they've been able to study charged particles in the tail of the interstellar comet . This has told them that 3I/ATLAS contains more nitrogen than the typical comet from our own solar system — revealing a tantalizing clue about how the strange comet formed. "Finding that it's so rich in nitrogen tells us it likely formed in extremely cold conditions, far from its home star," Lea Ferellec, a research fellow at Northumbria University, said in a statement . Ferellec's group used the William Herschel Telescope in Spain's Canary Islands. One of this telescope's instruments is a fiber-optic weave named,...