Tag Archives: it’s
Blue Origin scrubs New Glenn’s second flight due to bad weather
Blue Origin has postponed the second flight of its New Glenn rocket, which was slated to send a pair of NASA spacecraft on the first step of their journey to Mars on Sunday afternoon. The heavy-lift launch vehicle was scheduled to take off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 2:45PM ET., but multiple holds were issued during the under-two-hour launch window due to inclement weather. Blue Origin called off the launch attempt around 4:13PM.
The next launch opportunity is as yet unclear. Blue Origin was previously given a backup opportunity set for Monday afternoon, but the FAA has since issued an emergency order restricting commercial launches for the time being due to the government shutdown. As of November 10, commercial space launches can only take place between 10:00PM and 6:00AM. Blue Origin said...
Is it aliens? Here’s why that’s the least important question about 3I/ATLAS.
On October 29, Comet 3I/ATLAS reached its closest point to the sun.
This point, known as perihelion, was around 210 million kilometers from the sunor 1.4 times the distance between the sun and Earthand it was on the opposite side of the sun to Earth. This means the sun had been blocking the comet from our view (from Earth). Now, ground telescopes have begun watching it again.When it was first detected on July 1 2025 by the Asteroid Terrestrial Last Alert System (or "ATLAS"), one of the first questions people asked was "but is it aliens?".
This isn't the first time the alien question has come up in the context of a new astronomical discovery. But although it might be fun, it can also detract from the real (and very cool) science, and fuel misinformation.A long history...
What It’s Like to Watch An Internet-Based Ideology Break Containment
I first realized the extent of the internet’s takeover of U.S. politics while standing in the lobby of a drab hotel convention center, listening to an elderly gentleman rattle off a list of fringe conspiracy forums he frequented.
“Prison Planet,” he told me, and “Infowars.”
“Wow,” I said. In the conference room behind us, a man distributed papers watermarked with a custom edit of Pepe, a cartoon frog that achieved infamy as an unofficial mascot of the too-online, 4chan-dwelling alt-right of the 2010s.
I wasn’t at an alt-right conference. Nor was I at a meetup of tech-savvy trolls. I was at the 2018 Flat Earth International Conference in Aurora, Colorado. The hundreds of globe denialists who’d gathered included friendly retirees, mother-daughter duos,...
‘It’s kind of surreal that it happened to us’: Rural West Texas woman witnesses NASA space junk as it lands in her neighbor’s yard
When Ann Walter looked outside her rural West Texas home, she didn’t know what to make of the bulky object slowly drifting across the sky.She was even more surprised to see what actually landed in her neighbor’s wheat field: a boxy piece of scientific equipment about the size of a sport-utility vehicle, attached to a massive parachute, adorned with NASA stickers. She called the local sheriff’s office and learned that NASA, indeed, was looking for a piece of equipment that had gone lost.
“It’s crazy, because when you’re standing on the ground and see something in the air, you don’t realize how big it is,” she said. “It was probably a 30-foot parachute. It was huge.”
Walter said she soon got a call from NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility, which launches large unmanned, high altitude research balloons more...
