NASA Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Prepares for First Flight

NASA is targeting no earlier than April 8 for the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter to make the first attempt at powered, controlled flight of an aircraft on another planet. Before the 1.8-kilogram rotorcraft can attempt its first flight, however, both it and its team must meet a series of daunting milestones.

Ingenuity remains attached to the belly of NASA’s Perseverance rover. On March 21, the rover deployed the guitar case-shaped graphite composite debris shield that protected Ingenuity during landing. The rover currently is in transit to the “airfield” where Ingenuity will attempt to fly. Once deployed, Ingenuity will have 30 Martian days, or sols, (31 Earth days) to conduct its test flight campaign.

Press Release | #Mars2020
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More Results From The Large Hadron Collider Point to Entirely New Physics

The Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) experiment is still insisting there's a flaw in our best model of particle physics. 

Previous results comparing the collider's data with what we might expect from the Standard Model threw up a curious discrepancy by around 3 standard deviations, but we needed a lot more information to be confident it truly reflected something new in physics.

Newly released data have now pushed us closer to that confidence, putting the results at 3.1 sigma; there's still a 1 in 1,000 possibility that what we're seeing is the result of physics just being messy, and not of a new law or particle. 

Article
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NASA's Ingenuity helicopter is carrying a small piece of aviation history. Underneath the helicopter's solar panel is a stamp-sized piece of fabric. It was a part of the wing covering on the Wright brothers’ aircraft that took the first powered, controlled flight on Earth on Dec. 17, 1903.

Source | #Mars2020
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🚀 SN11 will be attempting a launch today (UPDATE: Launch scrubbed for today)

Earlier today SN11 preformed a successful static fire and we have received official confirmation from SpaceX that they're targeting later today.

SpaceX personnel are still on the pad but the village has already been evacuated so we expect a launch in the next few hours.

⚠️ Update: Launch Scrubbed for today.

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A spacesuit floated away from the International Space Station 15 years ago, but no investigation was conducted.

Everyone knew that it was pushed by the space station crew. Dubbed Suitsat-1, the unneeded Russian Orlan spacesuit filled mostly with old clothes was fitted with a faint radio transmitter and released to orbit the Earth. The suit circled the Earth twice before its radio signal became unexpectedly weak. Suitsat-1 continued to orbit every 90 minutes until it burned up in the Earth's atmosphere after a few weeks. Pictured, the lifeless spacesuit was photographed in 2006 just as it drifted away from space station.

Photo (APOD)
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NASA’s Future Telescopes Will Float at the Edge of Space

NASA wants a new type of space telescope. A team of scientists and engineers at NASA are developing ways to send ultra cold and ultra large balloon telescopes to the edge of space, which could open up a brand new way of seeing the cosmos.

You can do more science in a single balloon flight than you could do from years and years of observing from any of these existing observatories. You can take technology risks on a balloon that would never be able to take on a space mission. So, you can do all kinds of crazy things.

Video (Seeker) | Stream on Youtube
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