All posts tagged: space

NASA reveals first phase of giant moon base plans

NASA reveals first phase of giant moon base plans

Published by skeptic

NASA has unveiled the first phase of missions to deliver a sprawling moon base near the lunar south pole, with landers, buggies and drones all commissioned from Blue Origin and Firefly Aerospace. After the success of Artemis II’s lunar flyaround, NASA is striding ahead with plans to establish a moon base. The first three of a dozen planned missions were revealed on Tuesday, as well as multiple multi-million dollar contracts given out to American companies to design and deliver new robots and technical equipment. The first three Moon Base missions are: Moon Base I: Scheduled for autumn of this year, this mission will see Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 1 Endurance lander deliver payloads such as the Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies instrument to study how thrusters interact with the Moon’s surface, and the Laser Retroreflective Array, which helps orbiting spacecraft determine a more precise location using reflected laser light. The mission will land on the Shackleton Connecting Ridge to test capabilities that reduce risk for future crewed Artemis landing missions in 2028. Moon …

📚 A major win in a high-stakes space

📚 A major win in a high-stakes space

Published by Jenni Sidey

Sharon Blackie is the author of Ripening: Why Women Need Fairy Tales Now, out June 2nd from September Publishing. Below, she discusses three pieces of fairy-tale advice that are relevant to modern life. In Ripening, I argue that fairytales show us how to survive—maybe even thrive—in challenging times, because every fairytale heroine’s journey begins with catastrophe snapping at her heels. Encoded within these beautiful old stories is information about the behaviours and qualities of character that help us find a way through. Here are three fairytales which offer such advice. Trust your instincts and you won’t be eaten In the Slavic fairytale “Vasilisa the Beautiful,” our heroine, given the opportunity to question the fearsome witch Baba Yaga, instinctively intuits that she shouldn’t ask about the three pairs of disembodied hands which appear in Baba’s kitchen each night to take away the fruits of Vasilisa’s work. Her intuition saves her, as Baba Yaga confirms: “It’s a very good thing that you didn’t ask about things here inside my house. I don’t like people to tell stories about …

Norway joins France’s nuclear deterrence club – POLITICO

Norway joins France’s nuclear deterrence club – POLITICO

Published by Sam Flores

“Russia’s largest nuclear arsenal is located in the High North, just a few kilometers from Norway,” he said, adding that Norway would continue to primarily rely on NATO for its security. On March 2, the French president announced that Germany, Poland, Greece, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Sweden had agreed to discuss nuclear cooperation with Paris. That could include joint nuclear drills, information sharing and, ultimately, the potential temporary deployment of French nuclear-capable Rafale fighter jets in allied countries — a concept the French called “forward nuclear deterrence.” Since then, highly classified talks about exactly what the cooperation will entail have already begun with some nations, two officials told POLITICO. On Wednesday, Paris and Oslo also signed a wide-ranging bilateral defense and security deal — dubbed the Narvik agreement — that includes a mutual assistance clause, more dialogue between their armed forces and cooperation on air defense, space and Arctic security, Macron said. In the past few years, the French president has sought to increase his country’s defense ties with Nordic countries, including Denmark, Finland …

NASA Details Its Plan to Build a Lunar Base at the Moon’s South Pole

NASA Details Its Plan to Build a Lunar Base at the Moon’s South Pole

Published by skeptic

NASA finally presented the details of its phased plan to create the first lunar base at the moon’s south pole. Although the construction of a space research center that will allow a sustained human presence will take at least a decade, the missions that will lay its technological and symbolic foundations will start in the next few years. Among them is the test of Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 1 Endurance lander, scheduled for the end of 2026. The Moon Base project replaced in priority the Gateway program, an orbital station similar to the International Space Station that would serve as a node between the Earth and the moon. At the beginning of 2026, NASA rethought and simplified its strategy: It decided to concentrate resources on the lunar surface, reducing operating costs and accelerating the Artemis schedule. After weeks of silence, the agency published its new plan. A Lunar Base in 3 Steps So far, the plan for the lunar base consists of three phases. The first, from 2026 to 2029, will be dedicated to …

Space storms could switch train signals and cause serious accidents

Space storms could switch train signals and cause serious accidents

Published by skeptic

Trains entering and exiting London’s Clapham Junction Station Jack Taylor/Getty Images A number of electrical systems in the railways of many countries, including the UK, are vulnerable to space weather. In the worst case, a red signal could be turned green, potentially causing a deadly train crash, says Cameron Patterson at Lancaster University in the UK. “You could have disruptions to signalling systems, which are crucial to railway safety,” he says. “We have to prepare for these things now, and getting that message across, I think, is really important.” The sun is constantly blasting out charged particles, as well as light. This solar wind is what causes auroras. Sometimes, the sun emits more material than usual in what’s known as a solar storm, which can affect Earth’s magnetic field. The main danger is to satellites, but solar storms can also affect electrical systems on the ground because any change to a magnetic field can induce unexpected currents, including in railway tracks. That’s a problem because many railway systems rely on direct currents running through sections …

A Probe Took Incredible Pictures of Mars on Its Way to a Far-Off Asteroid

A Probe Took Incredible Pictures of Mars on Its Way to a Far-Off Asteroid

Published by skeptic

The Psyche probe, launched in October 2023 on its way to the metallic asteroid it studies, recently performed a flyby of Mars to take advantage of its gravitational pull and continue its trajectory toward the asteroid belt. During the maneuver, the spacecraft obtained new images of the red planet. Psyche passed within 4,609 kilometers, or 2,864 miles, of the Martian surface, and was boosted to a higher velocity after completing the gravity assist. On the approach, NASA activated onboard cameras, magnetometers, and gamma ray and neutron spectrometers to calibrate each instrument using the planet’s atmosphere and terrain. In recent images released by the space agency, the rugged Martian surface can be seen in detail, along with traces of the solar wind that, around craters and the south polar cap, is rich in water ice. “We’ve captured thousands of images of the approach to Mars and of the planet’s surface and atmosphere at close approach. This dataset provides unique and important opportunities for us to calibrate and characterize the performance of the cameras, as well as …

The Universe Is Full of ‘Impossible’ Black Holes. Now Scientists Know Why

The Universe Is Full of ‘Impossible’ Black Holes. Now Scientists Know Why

Published by skeptic

An international team of astrophysicists has found evidence that the universe recycles black holes, merging them to form even larger ones. Gravitational waves recorded in recent years show that some of the heaviest black holes within star clusters exhibit clear signs of being “second-generation” black holes—products of past collisions—and therefore could not have originated from the collapse of a massive star. Impossible Black Holes The evolutionary theory of stars explains that, at the end of the lives of the most massive stars, their cores compress until they form a point so dense that it curves space-time to infinity. This is the classic black hole, with masses 10 to 40 times that of the sun. There are also supermassive black holes, in the center of galaxies, with millions or billions of solar masses, whose origin is related to processes that occurred in the earliest moments of the universe. Between these two extremes lies a contested category: black holes with masses between 40 and 100 solar masses. They are too heavy to be born after the death …

Adeel Akhtar on funding cuts: ‘Art gives people space to be free’

Adeel Akhtar on funding cuts: ‘Art gives people space to be free’

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Actor Adeel Akhtar has weighed in on concerns over cuts to arts funding, telling The Independent why it’s vital to invest in young talent. The 45-year-old, currently starring in Mass at Donmar Warehouse, made his big screen debut in the 2010 black comedy Four Lions, playing aspiring terrorist Faisal. On the small screen, he’s appeared in the likes of Channel 4 drama Utopia and the one-off BBC drama Murdered by My Father – with the latter being a starring role that landed him the best lead actor accolade at the 2017 TV Baftas. Akhtar won a second TV Bafta in 2023, this time for his role in James Graham’s BBC crime drama Sherwood. London-born Akhtar has won two TV Baftas (Getty) Akhtar told The Independent: “I came up through National Youth Theatre and it was a really, really important step in …