Indian launch gives OneWeb enough satellites for global internet service

India’s LVM3, or GSLV Mk.3, rocket lifts off from the Satish Dhawan Space Center with 36 OneWeb satellites. Credit: ISRO The successful launch of 36 more OneWeb satellites aboard India’s most powerful rocket Saturday brought the total number of OneWeb spacecraft in orbit to 618, enough for the London-based company to start global broadband service …

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Falcon 9 deploys 56 Starlink satellites on SpaceX’s 20th launch of the year

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket heads downrange after liftoff Friday morning from Cape Canaveral. Credit: Michael Cain / Spaceflight Now / Coldlife Photography SpaceX continued launching satellites for the Starlink internet network Friday, sending a Falcon 9 rocket aloft from Cape Canaveral with 56 more older-generation broadband spacecraft as ground teams troubleshoot problems with a batch …

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Hypervelocity Stars Teach us About Black Holes and Supernovae

Hypervelocity stars (HVS) certainly live up to their name, traveling thousands of kilometers per second or a fraction of the speed of light (relativistic speeds). These speed demons are thought to be the result of galactic or black hole mergers, globular clusters kicking out members, or binary pairs where one star is kicked out when …

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SpaceX pausing launches of new-generation Starlink satellites

A side-by-side comparison of the Starlink V1.5 and the Starlink V2 Mini satellites. Credit: SpaceX / Spaceflight Now SpaceX’s next two missions will revert to launching older versions of the company’s Starlink internet satellites, instead of new second-generation Starlink platforms as originally planned, while ground teams work out unspecified problems with the first batch of …

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The Discovery of a Hot Neptune that Shouldn’t Exist

1800 light-years away, an unlikely survivor orbits an aged star. This rare planet is called a hot Neptune, and it’s one of only a small handful of hot Neptunes astronomers have found. Hot Neptunes are so close to their stars that the overpowering stellar radiation should’ve stripped away their atmospheres, leaving only a planetary core …

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Fly Around Jezero Crater on Mars in This New Video

There’s a reason Jezero Crater was chosen as the landing site for the Perseverance Rover: it is considered one of the likeliest places to find any evidence if Mars was ever habitable for long periods of time. In this great new flyby video from ESA, you can get a birds-eye look at Perseverance’s home. Created …

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Resilient bug-sized robots keep flying even after wing damage

MIT researchers have developed resilient artificial muscles that can enable insect-scale aerial robots to effectively recover flight performance after suffering severe damage. Photo: Courtesy of the researchers By Adam Zewe | MIT News Office Bumblebees are clumsy fliers. It is estimated that a foraging bee bumps into a flower about once per second, which damages …

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Did Supernovae Help Push Life to Become More Diverse?

Life on Earth has been around for a long time—at least 3.8 billion years. During that time, it evolved significantly. Why has biodiversity here changed so much? A new study proposes a startling idea. Some major diversity changes are linked to supernovae—the explosions of massive stars. If true, it shows that cosmic processes and astrophysical …

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Relativity Space ready for third attempt to launch 3D-printed rocket

Watch our live coverage of the countdown and launch of Relativity Space’s first 3D-printed Terran 1 rocket during a three-hour launch window opening at 10 p.m. EDT Wednesday, March 22 (0100 UTC Thursday, March 23). The Terran 1 will lift off from Launch Complex 16 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, on its inaugural …

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