Tag Archives: space
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...
NASA spacecraft tracks comet SWAN in incredible 40-day timelapse — and even glimpses interstellar invader 3I/ATLAS (video)
Comets are famous for making brief, dramatic appearances in our skies, but one icy wanderer just received an unprecedented level of attention from one of NASA's newest spacecraft. Comet SWAN moving across the sky in PUNCH images taken from Sept. 11 to 22, 2025. (Image credit: NASA/Southwest Research Institute)The video above stitches together hundreds of PUNCH images taken from Aug. 25 to Oct. 2, showing the comet gliding between two bright objects — Mars at the top and the star Spica in the constellation of Virgo at the bottom. Because the images were not fully processed before being combined, boundaries between individual snaps remain visible as thin black seams, the statement read.Comet C/2025 R2 (SWAN) was first spotted in September by Ukrainian amateur astronomer Vladimir Bezugly, who noticed the icy visitor a bright blob...
NASA spacecraft reveal interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS brightened rapidly as it swooped behind the sun
Researchers and amateur astronomer Worachate Boonplod kept track of 3I/ATLAS using GOES-19 weather satellite data. (Image credit: Image: CCOR-1/GOES-19/NOAA. Processed and annotated by Worachate Boonplod.)Comet 3I/ATLAS is rapidly brightening as it swings behind the sun, spacecraft observations have revealed.
The comet has been flying around the sun, obscuring it from Earth’s view, to reach perihelion (its closest point to our star) on Thursday (Oct. 29).Yet, while most of the world has been waiting for it to re-emerge, some researchers and amateur astronomers have been using spacecraft to follow its path.On Oct. 18, amateur astronomer and seasoned comet hunter Worachate Boonplod spotted the comet in images from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's GOES-19 weather satellitewhich uses an instrument called CCOR-1 to observe the sun as part of its regular space weather monitoring. Boonplod noted...
‘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...
