spaceflight
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Layoffs Loom at NASA After Termination of Over 100 Contractors Amid Mars Budget Constraints
NASA is scaling back on its ambitious Mars Sample Return (MSR) program, fearing federal budget cuts to the space agency’s plan to bring back rock and dust from the Red Planet, which has come under heavy scrutiny for having unrealistic costs and timelines. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) reportedly laid off 100 contractors last week…
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A SpaceX Booster Falls and Breaks, and More Science News of the Week
Our top science stories this week include a physics experiment to turn light into matter, an update from NASA’s Juno mission (it’s about to make a close encounter with Jupiter’s moon Io), and a roundup of the best archaeological discoveries of 2023. Physicists Designed an Experiment to Turn Light Into Matter An artist’s impression of…
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Three Satellites From SpaceX’s Latest Rideshare Mission Are Missing in Action
Among the over 100 satellites that launched on board SpaceX’s Transporter-9 mission, three failed to deploy and their current whereabouts are unknown. In-space transportation company Momentus recently announced last week that three out of the five satellites it launched on board a Falcon 9 rocket on Nov. 11 presumably did not deploy from the rocket’s…
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Then and Now: Our Earliest Close-Ups of the Planets Compared to Today’s Best Shots
For centuries, astronomers were limited to ground-based observations of the planets, but now we use spacecraft to capture close-up views of our neighboring worlds. Excitingly, our views of solar system planets have been getting progressively better over the decades, as these images attest. The dawn of the Space Age finally made it possible for humankind…