NicoElNino/iStock via Getty ImagesRocket Lab (RKLB) said Sunday that eight satellite platforms it built for MDA Space (MDA) have entered orbit, marking the first deployment under a $143 million contract covering 17 spacecraft. The satellites were launched on August 15 at 9:12 pm Eastern Time from the Cape.
Spherical “Aerobots” may one day invade the caves of Titan, a moon of Saturn that NASA says is one of the most Earth-like moons in our solar system. Titan is covered in rivers, lakes and seas of hydrocarbons, such as methane and ethane, as well as strange “karst” terrain that includes sinkholes and underground caves. … Read more
Pain is subjective, and while most bites are a real nuisance, there are very few that can stop you in your tracks, cursing loudly and clenching your teeth, says Richard Jones. What is a sting? A sting is not just a passive blow with a sharp point; the rigid, hollow stinger (or fang) is the … Read more
Experts warn: watching the eclipse without these home tricks could damage your eyes – Futura-Sciences August 16, 2026 3 min To observe the eclipse without running any risk to your eyes, there is obviously the option of special eclipse glasses. But some homemade projection methods also hold pleasant surprises. © Pascal Huot, Adobe Stock See … Read more
When Soundgarden wrote “Black Hole Sun,” they may have inadvertently been on to something. In a new paper in Nature, scientists have recorded a “black hole star” that is the size of our solar system and glows bright red in the depths of space. The findings are based on observations from the James Webb Space … Read more
A robin migrating at night can choose a seasonally appropriate direction within a featureless cage, even when stars and landmarks are not available. It rotates the magnetic field around the bird and its preferred direction rotates with it. The behavioral fact is well established: many birds possess a magnetic compass. The unresolved part is how … Read more
China’s Zhurong rover crossed a thin layer of flat, hydrated rocks in southern Utopia Planitia. A new analysis argues that its branching internal patterns and chemistry are best explained by large crystals of selenite, a clear, well-formed variety of gypsum that grows directly from concentrated water. If that interpretation is correct, Mars maintained an active … Read more
SpaceX continues to set records in spaceflight. Elon Musk’s company launches far more frequently than any other team and operates the largest satellite constellation ever created: the Starlink broadband network, consisting of nearly 11,000 satellites (and counting). On Saturday night (August 15), SpaceX set another record, for the shortest time between orbital flights: it launched … Read more
Enceladus offers astrobiology an unusually disciplined question. Saturn’s small icy moon has liquid water, contact between that water and rock, chemical energy, salts, phosphorus and a varied inventory of organic compounds. The models also show ways in which its hidden hydrothermal and oceanic circulation persists through geological time. Those findings make Enceladus plausibly habitable. They … Read more
In July 2011, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced that two astronomy teams had detected a huge reservoir of water vapor around the quasar APM 08279+5255. The agency translated the modeled mass into a number that still repeats itself: about 140 trillion times all the water in Earth’s oceans. The same account said that the quasar … Read more