SpaceDaily
Daily aggregated space news feed spanning space science, exploration updates, and commercial space industry press releases.
When Zhang Chenxing, Who Holds a PhD From MIT, Co-Founded Mega Engine Technology in Xi’an in Early 2024, China’s High-Pressure...
Chinese startup Mega Engine Technology, founded by MIT‑PhD Zhang Chenxing in early 2024, announced that its closed‑cycle kerolox engine “Chi” has accumulated 1,000 seconds of test time at rated conditions by May 2026. The engine delivers 35‑75 ton thrust at sea level and 87 ton in vacuum, with specific impulse of 302 seconds sea‑level and 350 seconds vacuum, matching performance of state‑run staged‑combustion engines. The achievement compresses a development timeline that normally takes a decade, signaling the first private Chinese capability in high‑pressure oxygen‑rich staged combustion. Mega Engine also plans a 200‑ton “Yan” engine later this year, targeting heavy‑lift reusable launchers.
The Leading Explanation for How the Moon Was Born Is that a World the Size of Mars Called Theia Slammed...
The giant‑impact hypothesis posits that a Mars‑sized protoplanet, Theia, collided with early Earth, ejecting debris that coalesced into the Moon. A 2023 study suggests that dense fragments of Theia’s mantle may have sunk to the core‑mantle boundary, forming the two...
Earth’s Magnetic Field Has Flipped Hundreds of Times, Swapping Magnetic North and South in a Switch Locked Into Ancient Rock,...
Earth’s magnetic field has flipped hundreds of times over the past 160 million years, with 183 reversals recorded in the last 83 million years. The most recent full reversal, the Matuyama‑Brunhes, occurred about 780,000 years ago, a span longer than the average...
A Rainbow Is Not Actually Located in Any Specific Place in the Sky — Every Person Watching the Same Rainbow...
A rainbow is not a fixed object in the sky but a viewing‑angle effect created by sunlight refracting through raindrops. Each observer’s eyes define a unique 42‑degree cone around the antisolar point, so the set of droplets that generate the...
A Team Led by Nick Mortimer at GNS Science in New Zealand Spent Two Decades Mapping the Basalt and Granite...
Geologist Nick Mortimer’s GNS Science team spent two decades sampling the Tasman Sea floor and, in a 2017 paper, formally named the 4.9 million‑km² submerged landmass Zealandia as Earth’s eighth continent. Their work showed the region’s crust is thick, silica‑rich granite...
The Moon Is Stealing Time From the Earth, and It Has Been Getting Away with It for Billions of Years....
Earth’s rotation is gradually slowing, lengthening the day by a few milliseconds each century, while the Moon drifts away at roughly 3.8 cm per year, a rate measured by laser pulses bounced off Apollo‑era reflectors. The popular claim that the Moon...
Almost Every Atom in Your Body Heavier than Hydrogen Was Forged Inside Stars that Died Long Before the Sun Was...
Almost every atom in the human body heavier than hydrogen was created in stars that lived and died before the Sun formed. Light elements such as carbon and nitrogen were expelled by low‑mass stars, while oxygen, calcium and most iron...
There Are More Atoms in a Single Glass of Water than There Are Glasses of Water in All the World’s...
A 250‑millilitre glass of water contains roughly 2.5 × 10²⁵ atoms, far more than the 5.3 × 10²¹ glasses that fill the world’s oceans. The atom‑to‑glass ratio is about 4,700, meaning that if the glass’s atoms were marked and poured into the sea, complete...
In the 1960s an MIT Scientist Built ELIZA, a Simple Program that Did Little More than Rephrase Your Words Back...
MIT researcher Joseph Weizenbaum created ELIZA in the mid‑1960s, a simple program that reflected users’ statements as questions to simulate a Rogerian therapist. When his own secretary asked him to leave the room so she could confide in the bot,...
NASA’s Next Major Space Telescope, the Nancy Grace Roman, Is Expected to Find Roughly 100,000 New Transiting Planets in Just...
NASA completed construction of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, targeting launch by May 2027 with a possible earlier window in fall 2026. During its five‑year primary mission, Roman’s wide‑field infrared survey is projected to discover more than 100,000 transiting exoplanets and...
When NASA Deliberately Crashed Apollo Hardware Into the Moon, the Seismometers Left Behind Recorded Vibrations for Nearly an Hour —...
Between 1969 and 1972 NASA deliberately crashed spent Apollo hardware—lunar module ascent stages and Saturn V third stages—onto the Moon to create known seismic sources for the four‑station ALSEP network. The Apollo 12 module impact generated a vibration that rose over minutes,...
In a Beijing Laboratory, 25 Volunteers Spent a Week Learning to Fly with Feathered Virtual-Reality Wings — Flapping to Stay...
Researchers at Peking University and Beijing Normal University trained 25 volunteers in a week‑long virtual‑reality wing‑flapping program. Functional MRI scans taken before and after the sessions revealed a measurable shift in the right occipitotemporal cortex, the brain region that normally...
In 2018, a Chinese Biophysicist Announced He Had Gene-Edited Twin Girls Using CRISPR. The Scientific Consensus Is that What He...
In November 2018 Chinese biophysicist He Jiankui announced that he used CRISPR‑Cas9 to edit embryos, resulting in the birth of twin girls, Lulu and Nana. Subsequent analysis showed the edits were novel CCR5 deletions, highly mosaic, and accompanied by off‑target...
Earth Is Quietly Dusted with Thousands of Tonnes of Space Material Every Year, Most of It as Grains Smaller than...
Extraterrestrial dust, primarily micrometeorites, blankets Earth at roughly 5,200 tonnes per year, dwarfing the sub‑ten‑tonne influx of larger meteorites. Most particles are sub‑sand‑sized spherules that melt during atmospheric entry, leaving tiny glassy beads. A Norwegian musician‑turned‑collector, Jon Larsen, demonstrated that urban...
75% of Americans Say They Would Trust AI Shopping Recommendations Less if Results Were Sponsored — Which Means OpenAI Just...
A Quad/Graphics and Harris Poll survey of 2,180 U.S. adults found that 75% would trust an AI shopping agent less if its recommendations were influenced by brand payments, and the same share would trust the paying brand less. The poll,...