International nonprofit wants to protect moon sites from space tourism
For the first time ever, the World Monuments Fund, whose mission is to preserve cultural heritage sites around the globe, is now setting its sights beyond Earth. The organization, founded in 1996, announced on Wednesday, Jan. 15, that the moon is among 25 at-risk sites, with the expectation that trips to the lunar surface will become the norm in the not-so-distant future.
The WMF warns that moon tourism could someday threaten more than 90 lunar landing and impact sites, including Tranquility Base, where U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong took his first steps on the moon.
WMF officials said they fear the lunar landscape may be victim to looters looking for souvenirs and private lunar exploration, potentially destroying iconic footprints and tracks that are part of human history if something isn’t done to protect them now.
The organization is urging international collaboration to preserve the moon, but currently no such organization exists, and no one country can lay claim to the Earth’s only natural satellite.
The WMF creates the at-risk list to raise awareness and spur action to preserve important artifacts and sites around the world, and now space.
“Next stop launch,” Bezos said in a post on X that also featured a video of a rocket test.
New Glenn is reportedly set to lift off on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2025.
The first mission is expected to be launching technology related to its Blue Ring program, which is a business venture that reportedly offers spacecraft to the Pentagon.
Project Kuiper involves deploying more than 3,200 low-orbit satellites over roughly a decade to provide global broadband access. Blue Origin is also working on certifying New Glenn with the U.S. Space Force for the National Security Space Launch program.
Pair of astronauts stuck in space at ISS as return to Earth further delayed
Boeing Starliner astronauts stuck in space at the International Space Station received news that their return to Earth faces further delays. The two arrived at the ISS more than six months ago for an eight to 10-day voyage.
Multiple mechanical issues with the Starliner forced NASA to return the capsule without Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams in September. The astronauts stayed behind at the ISS due to safety concerns.
The SpaceX Crew-9 Dragon Capsule launched in September was supposed to return Wilmore and Williams home in February 2025.
However, NASA announced on Tuesday, Dec. 17, that they pushed back the date of SpaceX Crew-10’s February launch. Wilmore and Williams’ replacements will travel aboard the SpaceX Crew-10, which is now on track to launch no earlier than late March 2025.
SpaceX Crew-10 team reportedly needs time to “complete processing,” a debriefing on ongoing research and maintenance aboard the ISS before Williams and Wilmore can return to Earth on the Crew-9.
NASA has not revealed how long that may take.
The extended stay in space reportedly prompted concerns for the astronauts’ health. Although, other NASA astronauts have stayed on the ISS longer.
A “Twin Study” kept astronaut Scott Kelly aboard the station for 340 days from 2015-2016. Most recently, astronaut Frank Rubio became the first American to spend more than 365 straight days in space.
NASA delays Artemis missions until 2026 and 2027 after heat shield problem
NASA’s efforts to put astronauts back on the moon for the first time in more than 50 years are being pushed back. The space agency announced on Thursday, Dec. 5, it found problems with the heat shield on the Orion spacecraft, which will eventually take humans back to the moon as part of its Artemis program.
A NASA investigation revealed the heat shield’s outer layer cracked and charred, with material coming loose. It was apparently caused by an issue with ventilation, causing gas to build up during Orion’s uncrewed mission.
NASA officials say they know what needs to be done to fix the issue, but it will require a change in the trajectory of the spacecraft to safely reenter Earth’s atmosphere, and that means the agency will need more time.
Now, NASA says the Artemis II mission, which involves the crew orbiting the moon but not landing on the lunar surface won’t happen until April 2026 at the earliest, and Artemis III, which will see humans on the moon for the first time since 1972, won’t launch until 2027.
The announcement is another bump in the road for an effort that saw its first uncrewed Artemis mission scheduled for 2016 delayed until 2022. However, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson says the delays are all in the name of safety.
Nelson posted on X, “We are committed to ensuring that when we go, we go safely. That’s what today’s decision is about—that’s how Artemis succeeds.”
US winning in one category when it comes to space race with China
The United States and China have ambitious plans for space exploration in the future. In order to achieve these goals, both nations will need to lean heavily on international support, and as reported on Wednesday, Oct. 30, the U.S. has taken the lead over Beijing.
The two adversaries are getting as many nations on board with their plans to explore space as they can. The American-led effort known as NASA’s Artemis program aims to send astronauts back to the moon by 2026. However the ultimate goal is building a lunar space station and launching missions to Mars and beyond.
However, the United States is currently notching more wins with Chile, the Dominican Republic, Estonia and Cyprus recently joining its coalition. The U.S. now has 47 nations working together on the mission.
Beijing is behind the U.S. in that respect, touting 13 nations as members of its international agreement with Senegal the latest to join in September. However, experts note, there are still many countries up for grabs to join each country’s respective partnerships.
NASA’s Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy said despite setbacks with the Artemis program, like being overbudget, the diplomatic efforts will continue. The agency sees diplomacy and international cooperation as the key to the future of space exploration.
NASA launches mission to find signs of life on Jupiter moon
NASA’s search for life on other planets continues with the launch Monday, Oct. 14 of its mission to one of Jupiter’s moons. Europa has long been thought to have a vast underground ocean and a potentially habitable environment. Now, NASA intends to find out if that’s true.
The mission, dubbed Europa Clipper, has started its long journey to Jupiter’s fourth-largest moon. The spacecraft launched at 12:06 p.m. EDT aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
NASA said it’s the largest spacecraft the agency has ever built for a mission headed to another planet. The Europa Clipper also is the first NASA mission dedicated to studying an ocean world beyond Earth.
“Congratulations to our Europa Clipper team for beginning the first journey to an ocean world beyond Earth,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement. “NASA leads the world in exploration and discovery, and the Europa Clipper mission is no different. By exploring the unknown, Europa Clipper will help us better understand whether there is the potential for life not just within our solar system, but among the billions of moons and planets beyond our Sun.”
According to NASA, information from its Galileo mission in the 1990s showed strong evidence that under Europa’s ice lies an enormous, salty ocean with more water than all of Earth’s oceans combined. Scientists also have found evidence that Europa may host organic compounds and energy sources under its surface.
The spacecraft is expected to enter the planet’s orbit in 2030 after a flight of 1.8 billion miles. It will then fly past Europa 49 times.
NASA said if the mission determines Europa is habitable, it may mean there are more habitable worlds in our solar system and beyond than imagined.
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Does Jupiter’s moon Europa support life? NASA mission aims to find out
Harris, Trump turn to PA with 3 weeks to go until Election Day
With exactly three weeks until Election Day, both candidates have their sights set on Pennsylvania. And NASA has launched its ambitious plan to visit the largest planet in our solar system in hopes of making a new discovery. These stories and more highlight your Unbiased Updates for Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024.
Harris, Trump turn to PA with 3 weeks to go until Election Day
With just three weeks until Election Day, the 2024 presidential candidates are focusing on the key battleground states — and none may be as important as Pennsylvania and its 19 electoral votes. Both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump took their message once again to the Keystone State on Monday, Oct. 14, each believing that if they win Pennsylvania, they will win the election.
Harris held a rally in the northwestern city of Erie, where Trump visited a few weeks ago. The vice president painted her opponent as a threat to American democracy, warning her supporters of what she calls the dangers of another Trump presidency.
“I believe so strongly that a second Trump term would be a huge risk for America and dangerous,” she said. “Donald Trump is increasingly unstable and unhinged, and he is out for unchecked power. That’s what he’s looking for.”
Harris also urged Pennsylvanians to get out to vote early as mail-in voting is now underway in the state.
Also Monday, former President Trump spoke during a town hall in Oaks, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. He touched on claims he’s a threat to democracy.
“When they talk about a threat to democracy, how about where they take a candidate who won fair and square, they throw them out and they put up a woman who failed, was the first one to drop out of a field of 22 and got no votes?” he said. “And this is the person we’re running against. And she is not a smart woman. That’s true. And we cannot — we’ve had that for four years. We’re not going to have it for another four years.”
Trump cut his town hall short after two attendees required medical attention, with both the former president and moderator South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem commenting on the heat in the venue. Trump then requested music be played for the remainder of the event.
Trump will be back in Georgia on Tuesday as the focus on the battleground states intensifies.
Along with rallies, the candidates are continuing their media tour to reach voters. The vice president will take part in a town hall Tuesday, Oct. 15, hosted by the radio program “The Breakfast Club” and then she will appear on Fox News on Wednesday, Oct. 16.
The group of pro-Palestinian demonstrators staged a sit-in demanding an end to U.S. support for Israel’s war against Hamas. While none of the protesters got into the stock exchange, dozens did cross the security fence put in place by police.
A New York Police Department spokesperson said officers arrested 206 people.
Since the war in Gaza started just over a year ago, more than 42,000 Palestinians have been killed and almost the entire population has been displaced, according to Gaza health officials.
North Carolina man arrested for allegedly threatening FEMA workers
Investigators in North Carolina arrested and charged a man with threatening to harm FEMA workers who were helping parts of the state devastated by Hurricane Helene.
According to the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office, William Parsons, 44, is charged with “going armed to the terror of the public” — a misdemeanor.
In a statement, the sheriff said while initial reports indicated there was a group of armed militia members threatening FEMA workers, they found Parsons acted alone. Officials said he did have a handgun and a rifle in his possession when arrested.
The arrest followed misinformation and disinformation being spread about FEMA in the wake of the natural disaster and caused FEMA to change the way it was working to help people impacted by Helene because of concerns over workers’ safety.
NASA launches mission to find signs of life on Jupiter moon
The mission, dubbed Europa Clipper, started its long journey to Jupiter’s fourth largest moon on Monday. It’s expected to enter the planet’s orbit in 2030 after a flight of 1.8 billion miles.
Pair of giant pandas set to arrive at the National Zoo
Eleven months after the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. Said goodbye to its giant pandas, two new ones are on their way. The pair of giant pandas have officially left a research facility in China and are set to be flown to D.C., according to Chinese officials.
It’s not yet clear when they’ll arrive. The zoo’s website still says new pandas will be coming by the end of the year, however, on Monday, the Zoo did announce it will be closed Tuesday for the safety of the pandas and staff.
The return of panda diplomacy between China and the U.S. has already seen a pair delivered to the San Diego Zoo with another promised to San Francisco.
2,471-pound pumpkin wins world championship
A 2,471-pound pumpkin won the 51st World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-off Monday in Half Moon Bay, California, south of San Francisco, defeating its closest competitor by six pounds.
Does Jupiter’s moon Europa support life? NASA mission aims to find out
NASA is just weeks away from its first mission designed to explore Jupiter’s massive moon Europa. Ahead of the historic launch, the agency started releasing videos on Monday, Sept. 23, offering a behind-the-scenes look at what’s going into the Europa Clipper Mission.
NASA is highlighting the efforts of five engineers each week leading up to the launch window of mission, which is starts on Oct. 10. The engineers are working on the giant spacecraft that will explore Jupiter’s moon in search of a “global saltwater ocean beneath its icy shell.”
The spacecraft will orbit Jupiter, and it will collect data with nine instruments and conduct an experiment using telecommunications to gather gravity data on the unforgiving radiation environment of Jupiter.
The length of a basketball court, the Europe Probe is the largest spacecraft ever to be developed for a planetary mission. If NASA finds that Europa is a habitable world, a second Europa mission will return, this time landing there to further study signs of life.
“At the time of launch, I will have been working on the Europa Clipper for a dozen years,” said Dipak Srinivasan, the lead communications systems engineer. “You know, seeing it from its infancy, literal napkin designs of what this spacecraft could look like, to actual realized hardware, to get it on its journey to Europa. It’s just going to be a wonderful feeling.”
Some “Hidden Figures” were recently honored for their contributions to NASA. The group of Black women who played a pivotal role in the early successes of the U.S. space program were honored with the Congressional Gold Medal on Capitol Hill the week of Sept. 15.
House Speaker Mike Johnson led the ceremony, praising the women for stepping into fields and said, “At a time when our nation was divided by color and often by gender, these women dared to step into fields where they had previously been unwelcomed.”
Johnson called their contributions the very foundation of NASA’s success in launching rockets and sending astronauts to the moon. These mathematicians and engineers played key roles in the early American space flights, calculating rocket trajectories and orbits.
Three of the women, Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, were honored posthumously. The fourth woman honored, Christine Darden, was honored for her work as an aeronautical engineer. Darden is best known for her sonic boom research.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson highlighted the challenges these women faced, saying their accomplishments are even more remarkable given the barriers of racism and sexism. Also speaking was Margot Lee Shetterly, author of the book “Hidden Figures,” which helped shine a light on their story.
An additional medal symbolically presented to honor all those contributions to NASA that went unrecognized.
First commercial spacewalk set as SpaceX’s Polaris reaches new heights
The mission is scheduled for five days and is designed to test cutting-edge spacesuit technologies and conduct the first wholly commercial spacewalk at an altitude of 435 miles.
This spacewalk will be notable because it will occur without professional astronauts and without an airlock. Instead, the spacecraft’s entire cabin will be depressurized to accommodate the walk.
Isaacman, joined by a retired military fighter pilot and two seasoned SpaceX engineers, successfully reached orbit approximately nine minutes post-lift-off. The launch faced several delays due to a helium leak and subsequent regulatory challenges surrounding booster recovery.
During its orbit, the team will undertake 36 scientific studies in collaboration with 31 partner institutions. These studies aim to investigate the effects of space conditions on human health, vital for the planning of future long-duration spaceflights and potential missions to Mars.
