space – WhatDoHow

February 27, 2021

NASA’s Perseverance rover carried a family portrait of its robotic siblings to Mars

Like any good piece of high-tech hardware, NASA’s Perseverance rover features an Easter egg hidden in plain sight. Since landing on Mars on February 18th, NASA has been sharing thousands of photos captured by the rover. And if you look close enough,…

February 27, 2021

Virgin Galactic delays space tourism flights to early 2022

Virgin Galactic's hopes for space tourism in 2021 were looking dim after a motor ignition failure in December 2020 pushed back its test flight schedule, and now the company is ditching any hopes of meeting that target. Parabolic Arc reports that…

February 23, 2021

NASA reveals video of Perseverance’s landing on Mars

It's early days, but NASA's latest mission to Mars has been a successful one thus far. After providing photos of Perseverance's safe descent to the surface last week, the agency has revealed footage of the critical moments of the landing:…

February 22, 2021

FAA ends investigations into SpaceX’s recent Starship launches

The regulatory drama around SpaceX's recent Starship launches has simmered down. CNN's Jackie Wattles and The Verge have learned that the FAA ended its investigations into the SN8 and SN9 launches. SpaceX and the FAA "settled" conce…

February 21, 2021

One of the first known black holes is more massive than once thought

Astronomers might need to adjust their expectations for black holes. According to the New York Times, an international research team has determined that Cygnus X-1, one of the first discovered black holes, is considerably more massive than once thoug…

February 21, 2021

Hitting the Books: How NASA survived the Reagan era ‘Dark Ages’

This week, Americans celebrated the successful delivery of NASA's Perseverance rover to its destination on the Martian surface, marking the dawn of a new era of interplanetary exploration. However, when it comes to searching the solar system arou…

February 20, 2021

NASA shares photos from Perseverance’s descent to Mars

The image you see above was taken just moments before NASA’s Perseverance rover successfully landed on the surface of Mars, and it’s just the first of many high-resolution photos to come. NASA pulled the image from a video of the rover’s descent that…

February 20, 2021

Nicaragua is opening a Ministry for Extraterrestrial Space Affairs

Nicaragua is looking to the skies. The Central American country has created the wonderfully named National Ministry for Extraterrestrial Space Affairs, The Moon and Other Celestial Bodies.
A bill to establish the agency passed through the National As…

February 19, 2021

NASA’s Perseverance rover lands safely on Mars

NASA’s Perseverance rover has successfully landed on the surface of Mars. It touched down at around 3:55PM ET, following a smooth descent to the surface. Perseverance's engineering cameras shared images from the landing site shortly after touchdo…

February 19, 2021

Watch NASA land the Perseverance rover on Mars live

In just a few short hours, NASA will attempt to land its most ambitious Mars mission to date. Following a seven-month journey, the agency's Perseverance will descend to the Red Planet later today. We’ll know whether the landing was a success arou…