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Chinese Astronauts Performed Emergency Space Station Repairs Following Debris Impact
China’s space station crew carried out two spacewalks this past winter to repair the solar wings attached to the core module, which had been damaged by space debris. The Tiangong space station’s core module, Tianhe, suffered a partial loss of power due to the impact, leading China to dispatch its astronauts on a pair of…
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Watch as NASA Launches Solar Sail to Test Sunlight-Propelled Space Travel
A new experimental mission by NASA is ready to set sail in orbit, using photons from the Sun to propel its way to higher altitudes. The Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3) is scheduled for launch on Tuesday during a launch window that opens at 6 p.m. ET. The mission will lift off on board…
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‘An Exciting Challenge’: NASA Plans Rare Repair Spacewalk to Fix Busted Telescope
NASA is preparing to send astronauts on a spacewalk to repair a telescope mounted on the exterior of the International Space Station (ISS). The repair involves installing patches to eliminate unwanted sunlight leaking into the instrument. NICER (Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer), an X-ray telescope the size of a washing machine, launched to orbit in…
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How the Color Purple Could Lead Us to Alien Life
In a little more than 30 years, we went from knowing only of the planets in our star system to discovering over 5,000 distant worlds spread across the cosmos. So far, none have looked quite like Earth. If an Earth-like planet was orbiting another star, however, it may look different than our precious pale blue…