NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter achieves historic powered flight on Mars
NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter nailed a successful debut test flight on Mars, engineers confirmed early Monday morning. The tiny spacecraft lifted itself 10 feet off the Martian surface for 39 seconds, marking the first powered flight on another world. The historic demonstration opens up tantalizing possibilities for a new mode of […]
Roman Space Telescope Will Also Find Rogue Black Holes
In the past we’ve reported about how the Roman Space Telescope is going to potentially be able to detect hundreds of thousands of exoplanets using a technique known as “microlensing”. Exoplanets won’t be the only things it can find with this technique though – it should be able to find […]
Watch NASA’s mission control track the first flight on Mars
NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter is slated to attempt the first-ever powered flight on another world at 3:30AM ET on Monday. The twin-blade rotorcraft will try to ascend 10 feet above ground and hover in place for 30 seconds while cameras on NASA’s Perseverance rover record the historic attempt from a distance.
Fermilab’s Muon g-2 Experiment Finally Gives Particle Physicists a Hint of What Lies Beyond the Standard Model
Since the long-awaited detection of the Higgs Boson in 2012, particle physicists have been probing deeper into the subatomic realm in the hope of investigating beyond the Standard Model of Particle Physics. In so doing, they hope to confirm the existence of previously unknown particles and the existence of exotic […]
SpaceX has Given up Trying to Catch Rocket Fairings. Fishing Them out of the Ocean is Fine
If there is one driving force in the commercial space industry it is economics. The whole concept of reusable booster rocket emphasizes the importance of getting launch costs down. SpaceX, the company leading the charge in trying to bring launch costs down, doesn’t just recover booster rockets however. It also […]
You Thought Black Hole Event Horizons Looked Strange. Check out Binary Black Hole Event Horizons
One of the strangest predictions of general relativity is that gravity can deflect the path of light. The effect was first observed by Arthur Eddington in 1919. While the bending effect of the Sun is small, near a black hole light deflection can be significant. So significant that you need […]
NASA reschedules Ingenuity helicopter’s first flight on Mars for Monday
NASA has rescheduled the first flight of its Ingenuity Mars helicopter to April 19th at 3:30AM ET, the agency announced Saturday.