spaceflight
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Airbus Launches Device to Keep Dead Satellites from Tumbling in Space
Earth’s orbit can be a chaotic place, with defunct spacecraft darting aimlessly across the dark skies. In order to tackle the growing issue of space debris, Airbus created a new device designed to keep satellites from tumbling around after they’re no longer of use. The device, aptly named Detumbler, launched on Saturday on board a…
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New Wearable Helps Astronauts Know Up From Down—Trusting It Is the Hard Part
A one way trip to the Red Planet would take up to nine months. During that time, astronauts on board the Mars-bound spacecraft could lose their sense of direction and ability to know up from down, making it difficult to orient themselves on the Martian surface. In order to keep astronauts on course, a wearable…
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NASA Scientist Flies to Edge of Space for Suborbital Research
After landing back to Earth from Virgin Galactic’s latest suborbital flight, planetary scientist Alan Stern and science communicator Kellie Gerardi received a ton of text messages from other researchers asking, “How do I get to do that?” The pair were part of the Galactic 05 mission, which transported them to the edge of space on…
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NASA Apologises for Not Supporting Your Delulu Plans to Visit Jupiter
NASA issued an apology for a slightly shady post on X that questioned people’s ability to visit Jupiter. In a recent social media post, NASA wrote, “Is visiting Jupiter on your bucket list? Let’s face facts, it’s not going to happen.” The space agency then went on to encourage space fans to send their names…