Britain's Prince Andrew gives up title of Duke of York
Britain's Prince Andrew said on Friday he would give up using his title of Duke of York following years of criticism about his behaviour and connectio...
NASA has launched its latest satellite, Lunar Trailblazer, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center, on a mission to pinpoint water sources on the Moon - a critical resource for future lunar missions and potential long-term bases.
Developed by Lockheed Martin’s Space division, the dishwasher-sized Lunar Trailblazer orbiter weighs approximately 440 pounds and spans about 11.5 feet when its solar panels are fully deployed. As a secondary payload on the mission—whose primary payload is a lunar lander from Intuitive Machines—the spacecraft is designed to map the distribution of water and better understand the lunar water cycle, with a particular focus on permanently shadowed craters at the lunar poles.
“On Earth, beach deposits take millions of years to form. We believe that similar processes could have created significant water ice deposits on the Moon, especially in its permanently shadowed regions,” said planetary scientist Bethany Ehlmann, the mission’s principal investigator and director of Caltech’s Keck Institute for Space Studies.
During its planned two-year mission, Lunar Trailblazer will perform multiple flybys and looping orbits, eventually settling into a science orbit approximately 60 miles (100 kilometers) above the lunar surface. The satellite’s two onboard instruments - the Lunar Thermal Mapper (LTM) and the High-resolution Volatiles and Minerals Moon Mapper (HVM3) - will work in tandem. LTM will precisely map surface temperatures, while HVM3 will detect the unique spectral signature of water.
“By correlating temperature measurements with the presence of water, we can gain critical insights into how water moves on the Moon and where it might be stored,” added University of Oxford planetary scientist Tristram Warren, one of the developers of the LTM instrument.
Although the lunar surface is often perceived as barren, previous observations have hinted at the presence of water even in sunlit areas. However, experts believe that the greatest reservoirs may lie in the cold, permanently shadowed craters near the lunar poles. Such deposits could not only supply drinking water for future lunar explorers but also be processed into oxygen and hydrogen fuel for rockets.
NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer promises to deliver the most detailed three-dimensional maps of lunar water to date, potentially rewriting our understanding of the Moon’s history - and paving the way for sustainable exploration beyond Earth.
Video from the USGS (United States Geological Survey) showed on Friday (19 September) the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii erupting and spewing lava.
At least 69 people have died and almost 150 injured following a powerful 6.9-magnitude earthquake off the coast of Cebu City in the central Visayas region of the Philippines, officials said, making it one of the country’s deadliest disasters this year.
Authorities in California have identified the dismembered body discovered in a Tesla registered to singer D4vd as 15-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez, who had been missing from Lake Elsinore since April 2024.
A tsunami threat was issued in Chile after a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck the Drake Passage on Friday. The epicenter was located 135 miles south of Puerto Williams on the north coast of Navarino Island.
The war in Ukraine has reached a strategic impasse, and it seems that the conflict will not be solved by military means. This creates a path toward one of two alternatives: either a “frozen” phase that can last indefinitely or a quest for a durable political regulation.
Apple has pledged to increase its investment in China despite ongoing tensions between Washington and Beijing, CEO Tim Cook said during a meeting with China’s industry minister.
SpaceX launched its 11th Starship from Texas on 13 October, landing in the Indian Ocean ahead of testing an upgraded version for future moon and Mars missions.
From Sunday, all non-EU citizens, including British visitors, will face new biometric checks when entering and exiting the European Union under its long-delayed Entry/Exit System (EES).
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Susumu Kitagawa of Kyoto University, Richard Robson of the University of Melbourne, and Omar Yaghi of the University of California.
The 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret, and John M. Martinis for their groundbreaking discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in electric circuits.
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