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launch

Next week SpaceX is going to reuse its first reusable rocket, launching information technology from their new digs at Pad 39A. This particular rocket is kind of a big bargain. Information technology was used in April 2016 to complete its kickoff resupply mission of the International Space Station (including delivery of the Bigelow expandable habitat). On its way back, information technology made history again equally the very showtime rocket successfully landed on the drone ship.

Marvel's wheels are taking some significant harm from the Martian terrain. NASA checks up on the rover frequently, and i of the tactics they use is having Marvel take selfies with the camera on the stop of its arm. Only terminal time they had it take a dazzler shot of its wheels, it revealed that all was not well.

Fifty-fifty though the wheels are machined from solid aluminum, their treads are starting to break. Curiosity will gloat the fifth anniversary of its deployment on Mars this summer, and the stalwart little rover has held up surprisingly well. Even so, the damage is obvious enough that mission control is pretty sure they know exactly which wheel is going to fail first. Should some other of the wheel's treads requite way, it'll represent about 60 pct of the wheel's useful life.

Scientists found the starting time straight show of a landslide on a comet. 67P, the icy comet to which we sent Rosetta and Philae, is much more geologically active than we thought, but it'south not tectonics — it's sunlight causing the activity. A especially intense sunbeam striking a cliffside with such laserlike intensity that it caused the cliff to give way, releasing some 2,000 tons of textile into a landslide and an attendant goose egg-k cloud of debris. And nosotros caught it in progress. This is the cloud:

Prototype: NASA/ESA

NASA described their plans for Europa at the 48th Lunar and Planetary Scientific discipline Conference this week. They've got a flyby and a lander planned, and they mean to investigate Europa looking for data on its briny subsurface ocean, forth with scouting for signs of life. The spacecraft will have to be radiations-hardened to survive Jupiter's magnetic environs. Even with the best titanium shielding, these missions tin can only last a few weeks to a few months before hardware failures put an stop to them. Even so, scientists believe the planned Clipper orbiter is up to the task.

Concluding but not least: using the Hubble space telescope, scientists have discovered the biggest rogue black hole ever — and they call back it may have been flung from the center of its milky way by gravitational waves that came from the merger of 2 galaxies. There does still exist the possibility that the blackness hole hasn't gone rogue at all, and is instead but sitting behind the milky way to which information technology appears to vest. More than telescope time volition tell.