Six individuals were aboard VSS Unity space plane, including first mother-daughter duo to venture to space together
Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity, the reusable rocket-powered space plane carrying the company’s first crew of tourists to space, successfully launched and landed on Thursday.
The mission, known as Galactic 02, took off shortly after 11am ET from Spaceport America in New Mexico.
Continue reading...The Luna-25 mission will seek to land near the south pole of the moon, seeking signs of water or its components
Russia hopes to launch its first successful lunar landing mission for nearly 50 years, with a long-delayed takeoff from the far east of the country scheduled for early on Friday morning that the Kremlin aims to tout as a new achievement in space exploration.
The Luna-25 mission will seek to land near the south pole of the moon, collecting geological samples from the area, and sending back data for signs of water or its building blocks, which could raise the possibility of a future human colony on the moon.
Continue reading...Chris Minns calls meeting of state government agencies after Queensland childcare worker was charged with 1,623 child abuse offences. Follow live news updates today
In a back and forth between Patricia Karvelas and prime minister Anthony Albanese on whether he supports a federal treaty, he says the no voice to parliament campaign is trying to muddy the waters:
What the no campaign want to do is to focus on everything that’s not happening.
What is happening is a vote in the last quarter of this year for a voice to parliament. And what that is about is recognising First Nations people in our constitution and then listening to Indigenous Australians so as to get better results. That’s what the focus is on. And what I find, I think, very enlightening, is … the no campaign want to talk about everything except for the question.
Well, where does it say that? It doesn’t even say that in the Uluru statement. It doesn’t say that, it doesn’t speak about the commonwealth negotiating treaties. It doesn’t say that Patricia. So don’t get sucked into it.
Today, the Greens need to vote for this legislation. You can’t say that you’re supporting housing, supply, public housing and then vote against it.
I’m not prepared to negotiate on Radio National, Patricia. People talk all the time across the parliament all the time.
Continue reading...European Space Agency brought down defunct Aeolus weather monitoring craft in unprecedented manoeuvre
A British-built weather monitoring spacecraft has been deliberately guided into the Atlantic Ocean, the first time a defunct satellite has been manoeuvred to perform an assisted crash on Earth.
Aeolus, a satellite that has provided data to weather centres across Europe since 2018, was successfully helped to its final resting place by mission controllers at the European Space Agency (Esa).
Continue reading...European Space Agency to attempt unprecedented manoeuvre despite craft not being designed for controlled re-entry
A defunct European satellite is expected to make an unprecedented return to Earth on Friday when mission controllers guide the spacecraft into a fiery dive over the Atlantic Ocean.
The Aeolus weather-monitoring satellite was not designed for a controlled re-entry at the end of its mission, but the European Space Agency (Esa) has decided to use what little fuel remains onboard to steer the probe to a watery grave.
Continue reading...Object at Green Head, 250km from Perth in Western Australia, could be from an Indian space rocket, experts said, but police say it is not hazardous
A giant metal cylinder has washed up on a beach in Western Australia, baffling locals and posing a mystery to police.
The huge copper-coloured cylinder was reported to police by local residents on Sunday, having washed up on a beach near Jurien Bay sometime earlier.
Continue reading...Chandrayaan-3 launches from island in southern India in follow-up to failed effort four years ago
An Indian spacecraft has blazed its way towards the far side of the moon in a follow-up mission to its failed effort nearly four years ago to land a rover softly on the lunar surface, India’s space agency said.
Chandrayaan-3, the word for “moon craft” in Sanskrit, took off from a launch pad in Sriharikota, an island in southern India, with an orbiter, a lander and a rover, in a demonstration of India’s emerging space technology. The spacecraft will embark on a journey lasting slightly over a month before landing on the moon’s surface later in August.
Continue reading...The Chandrayaan-3 is set to blast off from a spaceport in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh
India’s space agency has made final preparations for the launch of a rocket that will attempt to land a rover on the moon and mark the country’s arrival as a power in space exploration.
Only the United States, the former Soviet Union and China have made successful lunar landings. An attempt by a Japanese start-up earlier this year ended with the lander crashing.
Continue reading...European Space Agency mission launches on SpaceX rocket from Florida to shed light on dark energy and dark matter
A European-built orbital satellite was launched into space on Saturday from Florida on a mission to shed new light on dark energy and dark matter, the mysterious cosmic forces scientists say account for 95% of the known universe.
The Euclid telescope, named for the ancient Greek mathematician known as the “father of geometry”, was carried in the cargo bay of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket which blasted off about 11am EDT (1500 GMT) from Cape Canaveral Space Force station. A live stream of the liftoff was shown on Nasa TV.
Continue reading...Discovery of GS-9209, one of the furthest from the Milky Way, adds to evidence that large black holes prevent star formation, astronomers say
A supermassive black hole discovered at the heart of an ancient galaxy is five times larger than expected for the number of stars it contains, astronomers say.
Researchers spotted the immense black hole in a galaxy known as GS-9209 that lies 25bn light-years from Earth, making it one of the most distant to have been observed and recorded.
Continue reading...Footage captured from Cairns on the east coast to Normanton on the Gulf of Carpentaria shows growing fireball exploding with a loud boom
The north Queensland sky was briefly set alight on Saturday night as a meteor blazed through the atmosphere, exploded, and came to earth with a tremendous boom.
Footage captured on smartphones, dashcams and security cameras by businesses and residents from Cairns on the east coast to Normanton on the Gulf of Carpentaria circulated on social media on Sunday, showing a fireball growing rapidly in size as it approached the Earth, followed by a blast of greenish-blue light.
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Continue reading...Anger at decision to axe the main task of the New Horizons spacecraft to probe the remote Kuiper belt
It may have reached the edge of the solar system and travelled more than 5 billion miles through space, but the New Horizons spacecraft is causing major ripples on Earth. A dispute has erupted between scientists and US space officials in the wake of Nasa’s decision to stop funding next year for the vessel’s main mission.
The move was described as “misguided and unfortunate” by Alan Stern, New Horizons’s principal investigator.
Continue reading...Industry says the Albanese government is ‘defunding space programs without explanation’
Australia’s first national space mission – building satellites to detect and respond to bushfires and floods, and to undertake maritime surveillance – is up in the air.
The former Coalition government announced $1.2bn for a National Space Mission for Earth Observation (NSMEO), designing, building and operating four new satellites, in March last year.
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Continue reading...Modernisation of People’s Liberation Army continues with focus on cyberwarfare while retirees are now allowed to re-enlist
China’s government has revised its conscription laws, allowing retired service people to re-enlist and increasing recruitment focused on expertise in space and cyberwarfare.
The amended regulations, approved by the state council and the central military commission, came into force on Monday, and covered all aspects of China’s military recruitment and personnel deployment processes, for domestic emergencies and wartime.
Continue reading...Hakuto-R may have miscalculated altitude, says company after losing contact with spacecraft
Japan’s ispace said its attempt to make the first private moon landing had failed after losing contact with its Hakuto-R Mission 1 (M1) lander when it unexpectedly accelerated and probably crashed on the lunar surface.
The startup said it was possible that as the lander approached the moon, its altitude measurement system had miscalculated the distance to the surface.
Continue reading...Ispace loses communication with Hakuto-R lunar lander, ending a mission that began more than four months ago
A Japanese startup attempting the first private landing on the moon has lost communication with its spacecraft and said that it assumes the lunar mission had failed.
Ispace said that it could not establish communication with the uncrewed Hakuto-R lunar lander after its expected landing time, a frustrating end to a mission that began with a launch from the US more than four months ago.
Continue reading...Vladimir Putin hails achievement that beat Hollywood project announced by Tom Cruise, Nasa and Elon Musk’s SpaceX
The first feature film shot in space premiered in Russian cinemas on Thursday, as Moscow exulted in beating a rival Hollywood project amid a confrontation with the west.
The Challenge is about a surgeon dispatched to the International Space Station (ISS) to save an injured cosmonaut. Russia sent an actor and a film director for a 12-day stint on the ISS in October 2021 to film scenes aboard the orbiting laboratory.
Continue reading...Ukraine had said a satellite reentering the atmosphere was the cause of the phenomenon, but the space agency has denied this
A flash in the sky over the Ukrainian capital prompted confusion and alarm as city authorities said it was caused by a Nasa satellite reentering the atmosphere, while the US space agency denied involvement.
A “bright glow” was observed over Kyiv around 10pm local time, the head of Kyiv’s military administration Sergiy Popko wrote on Telegram.
Continue reading...Elon Musk says launch of most powerful rocket ever built called off due to ‘pressurisation’ issue
The largest and most powerful rocket ever built was readied and fuelled for its first test flight on Monday, but SpaceX cancelled the launch minutes before blasting off after discovering a “pressurisation” problem.
“A pressurant valve appears to be frozen, so unless it starts operating soon, no launch today,” the SpaceX founder, Elon Musk, said on Twitter. Minutes later, the launch was officially abandoned, with operators ending the countdown 40 seconds before lift-off.
Continue reading...Astronomers say gamma-ray burst may have been result of star collapsing to form black hole
A cosmic explosion that blinded space instruments last year may be the brightest ever seen, according to astronomers.
The blast took place 2bn light years from Earth, producing a pulse of intense radiation that swept through the solar system in October last year.
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