Verge Science is here to bring you the most up-to-date space news and analysis, whether it’s about the latest findings from NASA or comprehensive coverage of the next SpaceX rocket launch to the International Space Station. We’ll take you inside the discoveries of new exoplanets, space weather, space policy, and the booming commercial space industry.
Qantas airlines airline has delayed some flights to avoid the rockets’ splashdown in the Indian Ocean, reports The Guardian. Some at the last minute, says Ben Holland, head of Qantas’s operations center:
“While we try to make any changes to our schedule in advance, the timing of recent launches have moved around at late notice which has meant we’ve had to delay some flights just prior to departure.”
Following yesterday’s launch attempt being scrubbed, the NG-1 launch was first pushed to “no earlier than Tuesday” and now “no earlier than Thursday”
The rocket launch has been kicked down the road several times because of unfavorable conditions, including “ice forming in a purge line on an auxiliary power unit” during Monday’s attempt.
Citing conditions at sea that “are still unfavorable for booster landing,” the company posted that it’s pushing the mission back 24 hours to a three-hour launch window starting Monday at 1AM ET.
It’s the second delay since its January 10th target. Blue Origin will likely livestream the launch on its website and YouTube channel. See our write-up below for more mission details.
“This is going to be a function of the new administration in order to fund this,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said during a press conference today, according to Ars Technica. But will Jared Isaacman, Donald Trump’s pick to lead the agency, take up the challenge? Check out Georgina Torbet’s feature from last year to learn why bringing back the first samples from the Red Planet is more difficult than it sounds.
With Musk cozying up to President-elect Donald Trump, more countries, including South Africa, are considering loosening requirements to allow Starlink to operate, Bloomberg reports:
Until recently, many governments had explicit bans or other policies that kept Starlink from operating legally in their markets. In some cases like South Africa, rules requiring SpaceX to share equity with local partners got in the way...
Now many of the regulators and politicians who fought Starlink’s rise are removing those obstacles, cementing the company’s dominance and further extending Musk’s global influence.
A British startup has miniaturized the interfaces Apollo astronauts used aboard the command and lunar modules to create the DSKY Moonwatch. In addition to basic calculator functions the watch has GPS waypoint navigation and a battery good for 24 hours of use between charges with a USB cable.
You can preorder it now for £649 (around $814) and delivery is expected sometime in Q1 of 2025.
Taipei wants to make its communications networks less vulnerable to Chinese attack. Starlink isn’t an option because of Musk’s business ties to China and his company’s refusal to relinquish control in a joint venture. And Eutelsat’s OneWeb constellation of low Earth satellites isn’t up to snuff, according to technology minister Wu Cheng-wen:
“We found that their bandwidth is too small for real applications,” the minister said about OneWeb. “So far as I know, the company is in financial problems at this moment, so they have a [delay] in developing the second generation satellites.
Bezos’ Kuiper is still just a promise but is expected to begin offering service from its constellation of low Earth orbit satellites next year.
Specifically, NASA says more than 800 students observing the April 2024 solar eclipse over North America found that the Earth’s ionosphere rises as the Moon blocks the Sun, then returns to normal as it moves on, creating “atmospheric gravity waves.”
They figured that out by bouncing high-frequency radio waves off the ionosphere, according to NASA’s blog post detailing early results of experiments from that day.
Trump mentioned his dinner with the billionaire Amazon founder and Washington Post owner during his interview with Kristen Welker for Meet the Press today, according to NBC News.
He’s heard from Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and owner of The Washington Post: “We’re having dinner,” he said.
Bezos, who didn’t get along with the President-elect before, recently said he feels “optimistic” about his second term.
Can privately owned space stations replace the ISS? And what becomes of the research?
The satellite internet company received a Pentagon contract that will give 2,500 Starlink terminals access to Starshield, its secure satellite service for governments, according to Bloomberg. With this contract, Ukraine will have a total of 3,000 terminals connected to Starshield.
Need something more intense than a burning log to help you relax this season? NASA now has its own festive fireplace featuring an eight hour loop of the burning RS-25 engines used for the launch of the Artemis I mission two years ago. The fireplace can be streamed on NASA Plus, or you can watch it on YouTube.
The Starship vehicle successfully reignited a single Raptor engine while in space before splashing down in the Indian Ocean, writes SpaceX.
Unlike the 5th flight test, this one didn’t include a tower catch for the booster, as “automated health checks of critical hardware on the launch and catch tower triggered an abort of the catch attempt,” and it diverted to the Gulf of Mexico.
The launch is happening in Boca Chica, Texas and is scheduled for 5PM ET. SpaceX’s stream for the launch is live now.
The “Beaver Moon” can be seen across the US tonight. It’s “super” because the full moon will be at its closest point to Earth in its elliptical orbit.
Bezos, who killed The Washington Post’s endorsement of Harris and also owns a space company with billions in government contracts, was among the first major US tech leaders to chime in this morning. He is certainly aware that one of his biggest rivals in aerospace is run by a close confidant of the president-elect.
