Space

Mysterious Boeing X-37B Spaceplane is Being Sent on Mission for United States Space Force

By Jackson Chung May 7, 2020

It’s official, the sixth mission of the Boeing X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV-6) is set to be launched on May 16 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida by the Department of the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office in partnership with the U.S. Space Force. No details about the mission were mentioned, but it aims to test new systems in space and return them to Earth to help the U.S. more efficiently and effectively develop space capabilities necessary to maintain superiority in the space domain.

Space

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope Captures Comet ATLAS Disintegrating

By Bill Smith May 3, 2020

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope managed to capture stunning images of comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS) between April 20-23, 2020, giving us the clearest views yet of it disintegrating. The telescope managed to identify 30 fragments on April 20th, and then another 25 on April 23rd, all enveloped in a sunlight-swept tail of cometary dust.

Space

SpaceX Starship SN4 Successfully Passes Cryogenics Test

By Jackson Chung April 27, 2020

Photo credit: Elon Musk
Elon Musk announced that Starship prototype SN4 successfully passed a cryogenics test on Sunday at a SpaceX site in Texas. This is a milestone for the project as it will eventually send payload to the Red Planet. It also marks the first full-scale Starship prototype to pass this critical test involving filling the ship with liquid nitrogen to ensure it’s capable of surviving in-flight pressure conditions.

Space

NASA Juno Spacecraft Captures New Photos of Jupiter That Look Like a Painting

By Bill Smith April 20, 2020

NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured these incredible new images of Jupiter on April 10th and processed b y Kevin M. Gill. Simply put, they look like paintings, thanks to Juno’s onboard imaging technology, which recorded the data while traveling 5,375 miles above the clouds at a latitude of 50° degrees North at 127,000 mph.

Space

You Could Purchase a Slice of NWA 5000 Meteorite from the Moon for $250K

By Jackson Chung April 17, 2020

RR Auction’s Space Exploration showcase is an extremely rare slice of a lunar meteorite known as NWA (Northwest Africa) 5000, which was discovered in July 2007 and was the largest known lunar meteorite at that time. Weighing over 25-pounds, it was a larger piece of Moon than anything in NASA has in its Apollo collections. Since its discovery, the moon rock has been sliced several times.