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The Saturn V was, and still is, the largest object to leave the surface of the Earth. At 363 feet in height -- or over 30 stories tall -- the rocket weighed 6.3 million pounds, about the weight of...50 Boeing 747s... The rocket was the loudest creation made by human hands, except for the cacophony created by nuclear explosions. ...The five rocket engines of the Saturn V's first stage were the most powerful ever built...requiring 7.7 million pounds of force... To house the Saturn V, NASA built the Vertical Assembly Building (VAB) at Kennedy Space Center, which remains one of...

Explanation: No one, presently, sees the Moon rotate like this. That's because the Earth's moon is tidally locked to the Earth, showing us only one side. Given modern digital technology, however, combined with many detailed images returned by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), a high resolution virtual Moon rotation movie has been composed. The featured time-lapse video starts with the standard Earth view of the Moon. Quickly, though, Mare Orientale, a large crater with a dark center that is difficult to see from the Earth, rotates into view just below the equator. From an entire lunar month condensed into 24...

spaceship was dramatically aborted Saturday with just minutes left on the countdown clock, yet another setback for a program that has faced years of delays. With the astronauts strapped in and ready for liftoff, the test mission to the International Space Station was unexpectedly halted due to reasons that aren't yet clear. United Launch Alliance, responsible for the Atlas V rocket that Starliner sits atop, is now investigating why an "automatic hold" was triggered by its computer with three minutes and 50 seconds to go. ULA CEO Tory Bruno told reporters that engineers were currently de-fueling the rocket to enable...

Explanation: Made with narrowband filters, this cosmic snapshot covers a field of view over twice as wide as the full Moon within the boundaries of the constellation Cygnus. It highlights the bright edge of a ring-like nebula traced by the glow of ionized hydrogen and oxygen gas. Embedded in the region's expanse of interstellar clouds, the complex, glowing arcs are sections of shells of material swept up by the wind from Wolf-Rayet star WR 134, brightest star near the center of the frame. Distance estimates put WR 134 about 6,000 light-years away, making the frame over 100 light-years across. Shedding...

Gliese 12 b is a newly discovered rocky exoplanet, between Earth and Venus in size. It orbits a red dwarf star 40 light-years away..."Transiting" means this world passes in front of its star from our earthly perspective. That fact makes it possible to observe with TESS, whose full name is the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite...The uncertainties about Gliese 12 b center on its possible atmopshere. If it doesn't have an atmosphere, computer models indicate its average surface temperature are slightly warmer than Earthlike, with an average temperature of only around 107 degrees Fahrenheit (42 degrees Celsius). That's in contrast to...

Explanation: Why does a cloudy moon sometimes appear colorful? The effect, called a lunar corona, is created by the quantum mechanical diffraction of light around individual, similarly-sized water droplets in an intervening but mostly-transparent cloud. Since light of different colors has different wavelengths, each color diffracts differently. Lunar coronae are one of the few quantum mechanical color effects that can be easily seen with the unaided eye. Solar coronae are also sometimes evident. The featured image was taken last month from Paris, France. The blue beacon emanating from the Eiffel Tower did not affect the colorful lunar corona.

Explanation: What happens if you ascend this stairway to the Milky Way? Before answering that, let's understand the beautiful sky you will see. Most eye-catching is the grand arch of the Milky Way Galaxy, the band that is the central disk of our galaxy which is straight but distorted by the wide-angle nature of this composite image. Many stars well in front of the Milk Way will be visible, with the bright white star just below the stellar arch being Altair, and the bright blue star above it being Vega. The air glows green on the left, just above the...

Explanation: It's back. The famous active region on the Sun that created auroras visible around the Earth earlier this month has survived its rotation around the far side of the Sun -- and returned. Yesterday, as it was beginning to reappear on the Earth-facing side, the region formerly labeled AR 3664 threw another major solar flare, again in the highest-energy X-class range. The featured video shows the emerging active region on the lower left, as it was captured by NASA's Earth-orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory yesterday in ultraviolet light. The video is a time-lapse of the entire Sun rotating over 24...

Explanation: Dark markings and bright nebulae in this telescopic southern sky view are telltale signs of young stars and active star formation. They lie a mere 650 light-years away, at the boundary of the local bubble and the Chamaeleon molecular cloud complex. Regions with young stars identified as dusty reflection nebulae from the 1946 Cederblad catalog include the C-shaped Ced 110 just above and right of center, and bluish Ced 111 below it. Also a standout in the frame, the orange tinted V-shape of the Chamaeleon Infrared Nebula (Cha IRN) was carved by material streaming from a newly formed low-mass...

Explanation: What's happened to our Sun? Nothing very unusual -- it just threw a filament. Toward the middle of 2012, a long standing solar filament suddenly erupted into space, producing an energetic coronal mass ejection (CME). The filament had been held up for days by the Sun's ever changing magnetic field and the timing of the eruption was unexpected. Watched closely by the Sun-orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory, the resulting explosion shot electrons and ions into the Solar System, some of which arrived at Earth three days later and impacted Earth's magnetosphere, causing visible auroras. Loops of plasma surrounding the active...

Explanation: Orbiting 400 kilometers above Quebec, Canada, planet Earth, the International Space Station Expedition 59 crew captured this snapshot of the broad St. Lawrence River and curiously circular Lake Manicouagan on April 11. Right of center, the ring-shaped lake is a modern reservoir within the eroded remnant of an ancient 100 kilometer diameter impact crater. The ancient crater is very conspicuous from orbit, a visible reminder that Earth is vulnerable to rocks from space. Over 200 million years old, the Manicouagan crater was likely caused by the impact of a rocky body about 5 kilometers in diameter. Currently, there is...

Boeing is set to launch its first crewed space mission in June without fixing a small helium gas leak on its troubled Starliner spaceship, officials said Friday. The vessel, under development since 2010, has been plagued by technical problems and has yet to fulfill its purpose of ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station, allowing Boeing's rival SpaceX to zoom ahead with its Crew Dragon capsule. Starliner was supposed to finally fly astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the orbital outpost on May 6, but the mission was scrubbed hours before lift-off after a faulty valve was discovered on...

Explanation: Star formation can be messy. To help find out just how messy, ESA's new Sun-orbiting Euclid telescope recently captured the most detailed image ever of the bright star forming region M78. Near the image center, M78 lies at a distance of only about 1,300 light-years away and has a main glowing core that spans about 5 light-years. The featured image was taken in both visible and infrared light. The purple tint in M78's center is caused by dark dust preferentially reflecting the blue light of hot, young stars. Complex dust lanes and filaments can be traced through this gorgeous...

Boeing's Starliner manned Crew Flight test has been indefinitely delayed after a string of issues, NASA officials said. The launch has been scheduled for no earlier than Saturday, and no new date has been announced. "The team has been in meetings for two consecutive days, assessing flight rationale, system performance and redundancy. There is still forward work in these areas, and the next possible launch opportunity is still being discussed," NASA, Boeing and United Launch Alliance said in a statement. The original May 6 launch date to send a crew to the International Space Station was canceled, and subsequently the...

Explanation: Spiral galaxy NGC 3169 looks to be unraveling like a ball of cosmic yarn. It lies some 70 million light-years away, south of bright star Regulus toward the faint constellation Sextans. Wound up spiral arms are pulled out into sweeping tidal tails as NGC 3169 (left) and neighboring NGC 3166 interact gravitationally. Eventually the galaxies will merge into one, a common fate even for bright galaxies in the local universe. Drawn out stellar arcs and plumes are clear indications of the ongoing gravitational interactions across the deep and colorful galaxy group photo. The telescopic frame spans about 20 arc...

Explanation: Can a gas cloud eat a galaxy? It's not even close. The "claw" of this odd looking "creature" in the featured photo is a gas cloud known as a cometary globule. This globule, however, has ruptured. Cometary globules are typically characterized by dusty heads and elongated tails. These features cause cometary globules to have visual similarities to comets, but in reality they are very much different. Globules are frequently the birthplaces of stars, and many show very young stars in their heads. The reason for the rupture in the head of this object is not yet known. The galaxy...

Explanation: It was bright and green and stretched across the sky. This striking aurora display was captured in 2016 just outside of Östersund, Sweden. Six photographic fields were merged to create the featured panorama spanning almost 180 degrees. Particularly striking aspects of this aurora include its sweeping arc-like shape and its stark definition. Lake Storsjön is seen in the foreground, while several familiar constellations and the star Polaris are visible through the aurora, far in the background. Coincidently, the aurora appears to avoid the Moon visible on the lower left. The aurora appeared a day after a large hole opened...

Saturday target date for the highly anticipated crewed maiden voyage of Boeing’s Starliner is now off the table — and NASA has not immediately named a new one. “The team has been in meetings for two consecutive days, assessing flight rationale, system performance, and redundancy,” NASA said in a statement. “There is still forward work in these areas, and the next possible launch opportunity is still being discussed.” The update comes after several previous delays this month, and a week after Starliner mission teams reported a small helium leak in the service module of the spacecraft. They traced the leak...

A groundbreaking new pulsed plasma propulsion system could soon enable faster and safer crewed missions to planets like Mars, according to a leading developer of novel technologies aimed at advancing the next stages of human space exploration. Scottsdale, Arizona-based space technology developer Howe Industries recently announced that its Pulsed Plasma Rocket (PPR) could represent a game-changer in advanced propulsion for space travel, allowing crewed missions to significantly reduce the travel time required to reach Mars. According to current timelines, NASA aims to send the first crewed missions to Mars within the next two decades using habitat-like spacecraft paired with hybrid...

Explanation: It seemed like night, but part of the sky glowed purple. It was the now famous night of May 10, 2024, when people over much of the world reported beautiful aurora-filled skies. The featured image was captured this night during early morning hours from Arlington, Wisconsin, USA. The panorama is a composite of several 6-second exposures covering two thirds of the visible sky, with north in the center, and processed to heighten the colors and remove electrical wires. The photographer (in the foreground) reported that the aurora appeared to flow from a point overhead but illuminated the sky only...