On Jan. 19, 2019, just 161 days after its launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe completed its first orbit of the Sun, reaching the point in its orbit farthest from our star, called aphelion. The spacecraft has now begun the second of 24 planned orbits, on track for its second perihelion, or closest approach to the Sun, on April 4, 2019. Parker Solar Probe entered full operational status (known as Phase E) on Jan. 1, with all systems online and operating as designed. The spacecraft has been delivering data from its instruments to...
The speed of light in a vacuum is 186,282 miles per second (299,792 kilometers per second) If you could travel at the speed of light, you could go around the Earth 7.5 times in one second. Thanks to the work of Albert Einstein and others, we now understand light speed to be a theoretical limit: light speed — a constant called “c” — is thought to be not achievable by anything with mass. Is the speed of light really constant?Light travels in waves, and, like sound, can be slowed depending on what it is traveling through. Let’s Start A new...
The Japanese space agency JAXA has officially confirmed that it intends to send its own astronaut to the Moon. This is the first such mission in the history of the Land of the Rising Sun, which must become a reality by 2030. The government must give its approval to the implementation of JAXA’s innovative program, but this is a matter of formality. I remind you that Japan have their own module and astronauts aboard on the International Space Station (ISS). Sending a person to the moon will definitely be the most ambitious task of JAXA so far and will overshadow...
