Princeton NJ (SPX) Mar 15, 2023
In late 2021, Salvatore Torquato, on sabbatical from Princeton's Department of Chemistry, reached across the aisle as it were and invited a young astrophysicist at the Institute for Advanced Study to apply the tools of statistical mechanics to his own work on the distribution of galaxies. The astrophysicist, Oliver Philcox, now a postdoc at the Simons Foundation, was intrigued. A year-long

Princeton NJ (SPX) Mar 15, 2023
The universe is peppered with galaxies, which, on large scales, exhibit a filamentary pattern, referred to as the cosmic web. This heterogeneous distribution of cosmic material is in some ways like blueberries in a muffin where material clusters in certain areas but may be lacking in others. Based on a series of simulations, researchers have begun to probe the heterogeneous structure of th

Cedar Park CA (SPX) Mar 15, 2023
Firefly Aerospace, Inc., an end-to-end space transportation company, was awarded a $112 million NASA contract to deliver multiple lunar payloads in 2026. As Firefly's second task order won under NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload (CLPS) initiative, the company will use its Blue Ghost spacecraft in a two-stage configuration to first place a satellite into lunar orbit and then deliver two research pa

Washington DC (UPI) Mar 14, 2023
SpaceX mission CRS-27 is planned for launch to the International Space Station Tuesday, carrying food, equipment, and materials for experiments in orbit. The Dragon spacecraft is scheduled to launch at 8:30 p.m. EST from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Its launch will be livestreamed by SpaceX. The commercial resupply mission will carry about 6,300 pounds of food to the spac

Paris (AFP) March 14, 2023
The chances have plummeted that a newly-discovered asteroid with the potential to wipe out a city will hit Earth on Valentine's Day 2046, the European Space Agency said on Tuesday. The asteroid, which is named 2023 DW and is estimated to be around the size of a 50-metre Olympic swimming pool, was first spotted by a small Chilean observatory on February 26. It swiftly shot to the top of N

Washington DC (UPI) Mar 14, 2023
NASA's James Webb Telescope captured a rare Wolf-Rayet star, one of the first times an image of that type of supernova has been seen. The space agency Tuesday released images of the star in transition, which were captured in "unprecedented detail." Wolf-Rayet 124 comes with "a distinctive halo of gas and dust that frames the star and glows in the infrared light detected by Webb,

Washington (AFP) March 14, 2023
Arianespace said on Tuesday that it has signed a contract to launch two Vega-C rockets, forging ahead three months after the failure of the Italian-made vehicle's first commercial flight. The first of the two new launches will occur in the last quarter of 2025 from the Kourou space base in French Guiana, Arianespace said in a statement. The contract includes an option for a third launch,

Washington (AFP) March 15, 2023
The massive constellation of satellites operated by SpaceX, while still growing, will soon be joined in low Earth orbit by many more commercial competitors, but also government-sponsored programs. When firms floated the idea of expanding access to high-speed internet through satellite constellations in low Earth orbit (LEO), analysts expected only two or three companies would succeed. "B

Space Coast FL (SPX) Mar 15, 2023
SpaceX launched its 27th Commercial Resupply Service (CRS-27) mission for a 35-hour journey to the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA on Tuesday, March 14 at 8:30 p.m. EDT (0030 GMT Wednesday) from Launch Complex-39A (LC-39A) at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The uncrewed Dragon capsule atop a Falcon 9 rocket is packed with more than 6,000 pounds of fresh food, hardware, and ex

A Wolf-Rayet star is a rare prelude to the famous final act of a massive star: the supernova. As one of its first observations in 2022, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope captured the Wolf-Rayet star WR 124 in unprecedented detail.