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Michaela Benthaus is an engineer from Germany. On December 20, she became the first wheelchair user in space. Benthaus rode aboard a Blue Origin capsule rocket with five other passengers. The capsule blasted off from Van Horn, Texas. It carried…
On January 15, NASA completed its first medical evacuation from space. Its SpaceX Crew-11 mission ended early when an astronaut had a medical issue that couldn’t be treated at the International Space Station. At a press conference, NASA administrator Jared…
Space is full of mysteries, from black holes to dark matter. Now, thanks to the world’s largest digital camera, astronomers have a new view of the universe. The Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) camera is part of the…
Does the day feel like it’s zooming by? It’s not your imagination: The Earth is rotating faster today—1.3 to 1.5 milliseconds faster, to be exact. That means today will be a fraction of a second shorter than a normal day.…
On June 23, a giant digital camera gave astronomers a new look at the universe. Located at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, in Chile, the world’s largest digital camera was built to photograph distant reaches of outer space. The observatory…
Two NASA astronauts are finally home after unexpectedly spending more than nine months in space. On June 5, 2024, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore were launched into space. They were the first people to fly on Boeing’s new Starliner spacecraft.…
Firefly Aerospace has become the first private business to conduct a successful moon landing. On March 2, its uncrewed Blue Ghost lander (above) touched down on lunar soil. The lander launched from Florida in January. It carried tools, including…
Far from Earth, an asteroid called Bennu orbits the sun. In 2023, a NASA spacecraft brought samples of Bennu back to Earth. Two papers, both published in January, reveal that the samples contained the building blocks of life, including compounds…
The dwarf planet Pluto had a special “birthday” this month. 95 years ago, on February 18, 1930, Pluto was discovered. American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh spotted the dwarf planet using a telescope at Lowell Observatory, in Flagstaff, Arizona. At that time,…
Uranus and Neptune are called ice giants, because of their icy cores. But each of these frosty planets may be hiding a deep ocean. Astronomer Burkhard Militzer published his research in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences…
