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SpaceX has received clearance from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to launch its huge Starship rocket on a much-anticipated second test flight. The agency granted SpaceX, the private spaceflight company founded by Elon Musk, a launch license for the company’s next-generation rocket on Wednesday, after a first launch attempt in April ended in a fiery explosion. “The FAA has given license authorization for the second launch of the @SpaceX Starship Super Heavy vehicle,” the FAA said in a s…
2 months ago
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That’s no moon. An astronaut’s tool bag that accidentally floated away during a routine spacewalk at the International Space Station is now orbiting Earth and may be bright enough to spot by keen-eyed skywatchers. The bag drifted away from the space station this month when NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara were performing maintenance on the exterior of the orbiting outpost. “During the activity, one tool bag was inadvertently lost,” NASA officials wrote Nov. 1 in a blog post detai…
2 months ago
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Iceland has declared a state of emergency and evacuated a coastal town, saying there is a “significant likelihood” of a volcanic eruption in the coming days. The Icelandic Meteorological Office reported intense earthquake swarms in the southwestern part of the country in recent weeks, likely tied to the movement of underground magma, or molten rock, in and around the Reykjanes Peninsula. The sharp uptick in seismic activity prompted authorities to evacuate all 3,400 residents from the town of Gr…
2 months ago
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The U.S. has had a record 25 weather disasters so far in 2023, each of which caused at least $1 billion in damage — and a new NASA analysis suggests the year’s extreme weather events may be far from over. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Wednesday released its monthly climate report, which included details of the country’s billion-dollar extreme weather events in the first 10 months of the year. With two months left in 2023, the 25 disasters tallied to date are already the…
2 months ago
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The spectacular first images from a dark matter-hunting telescope were unveiled Tuesday, showcasing bustling galaxies, clusters of ancient stars and wispy, dreamlike stellar nurseries. The images, from the European Space Agency’s Euclid telescope that launched into space in July, were released to great fanfare. The dramatic views are a tantalizing first glimpse of what the dark universe-mapping telescope could yield over the course of its six-year mission. One of the most eye-catching of the new…
3 months ago
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Climate aid to poor countries is dwindling at a time when developing nations are facing mounting risks from storms, floods, wildfires, drought, extreme temperatures and other environment-related climate crises, according to a report released Thursday by the United Nations. The report, published by the U.N. Environment Programme, estimates that developing countries will need $215 billion to $387 billion a year this decade to cope with the realities of a warming world — a range that is 10 to 18 ti…
3 months ago
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Two long-dormant “supervolcanoes” on two separate continents appear to be stirring to life. Well, maybe. In recent months, more than a thousand minor earthquakes have rattled the area around the Campi Flegrei volcano in southern Italy, stoking fears that it may soon erupt again after nearly five centuries. Some 6,000 miles away, scientists have for decades recorded similarly small earthquakes and instances of ground deformation at the Long Valley Caldera, a volcano in eastern California that sit…
3 months ago
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Comet chasers: Give the devil his due. A comet with two distinct “horns” of gas and ice, earning it the nickname “devil comet” is speeding through the inner solar system and may be visible to the naked eye in the spring when it reaches its closest point to Earth. The celestial object, formally known as Comet 12/P Pons-Brooks, does not pose a threat to the planet. Instead, the cosmic interloper provides an opportunity for skywatchers to try to spot the comet as it nears Earth on its 71-year orbit…
3 months ago
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A dangerously thick “superfog” that caused a huge vehicle pileup north of New Orleans on Monday was made worse by wildfires burning nearby, according to local officials. Seven people were killed and more than two dozen others were injured in crashes involving at least 158 vehicles in the northbound and southbound lanes along a stretch of Louisiana’s Interstate 55. An unusually dense layer of fog was partly to blame for the accidents, which left a mileslong trail of crumpled and charred vehicles.…
3 months ago
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Unusually warm waters in the Caribbean Sea are fueling what some scientists say is the region’s worst episode of coral bleaching ever recorded — yet another worrisome development in what has been an off-the-charts year of warmth for the world’s oceans. Reefs in and around the Caribbean are experiencing high levels of heat stress, according to researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, stoking fears that widespread bleaching could lead to a catastrophic die-off of corals…
3 months ago
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A NASA probe launched into space Friday on a 2.2-billion-mile journey to a huge, metal-rich space rock in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The Psyche spacecraft lifted off atop one of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rockets at 10:19 a.m. ET from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The probe will now spend years traveling into deep space en route to an asteroid also named Psyche, which may have once been part of the core of a “planetesimal,” a type of small celestial body that is a crucial…
3 months ago
