Video recently released by Don Pettit, a career NASA astronaut who recently returned from a 208-day stint aboard the International Space Station, shows multiple convoys of Elon Musk’s SpaceX satellites crisscrossing each other over the horizon.

The satellite convoys were “very visible,” Pettit wrote in response to a social media question. “Many were as bright as Jupiter, they would flash from 1 to 10 seconds,” he added.

#space #spacex #NASA

Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb remains skeptical about the true nature of 3I/ATLAS, the third interstellar object ever spotted passing through our solar system. While most astronomers consider it a typical comet made of ice and carbon dioxide, Loeb believes there’s still something unusual about it.

In a recent blog Q&A, he estimated a 30–40% chance that 3I/ATLAS isn’t entirely natural — suggesting it *could* even be a technological artifact disguised as a comet, a kind of “Trojan Horse” from beyond our solar system.

However, Loeb admits his views might change once new data arrives. The ESA’s Juice spacecraft and NASA’s Juno mission will both make close approaches to 3I/ATLAS soon, offering fresh observations as it nears the Sun — the phase when comets are most active and volatile. These insights could finally reveal whether 3I/ATLAS is just another comet… or something far stranger.

#Interstellar #Space #Nasa

A Chinese rocket booster that was part of a Long March 2 launch tumbled back to Earth and exploded in a massive orange fireball as it impacted the ground.

The fireball from the crash was visible from miles away, but authorities declared the launch a success, saying the test satellite comfortably reached low earth orbit.

Read more about China’s space ambitions at the link in our bio.

#Space #News

Some people are so shameless, you almost have to respect it. ⁠
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After getting caught using AI by leaving in hallucinated quotes and citations in his court filings, defense lawyer Michael Fourte then submitted a brief explaining his AI usage .... which was also written with a large language model.⁠
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As @404mediaco reports, the plaintiff’s legal team first caught the mistakes, which included inaccurate or completely made up citations and quotations, and filed a request to sanction Fourte. In his opposition to the sanctions motion, Fourte submitted a document that contained more than double the amount (!!) of made-up or erroneous citations.⁠
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After getting grilled on it, Fourte admitted he “did use AI.” He also, in practically the same breath, said he took “full responsibility” for the AI-generated nonsense — but also tried to pass off some of the blame on some additional staff he’d brought on the case. Classic.⁠
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Later, he said, “I never said I didn’t use AI. I said that I didn’t use unvetted AI.”⁠

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New images from the Nordic Optical Telescope show that the debris “tail” of the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS has shifted to face the Sun — forming an “anti-tail,” a known optical illusion caused by our viewing angle and the Sun’s gravity.

However, Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, known for his theories on alien technology, suggests a different explanation. In his latest blog, he speculates the anti-tail might represent a spacecraft applying “braking thrust” to slow down near the Sun — an idea he credits to colleague Adam Hibberd of the Institute for Interstellar Studies.

3I/ATLAS has dramatically intensified its mass loss after emerging from behind the Sun. New images show a huge anti-tail and a “smoking” trail stretching millions of miles. According to Avi Loeb, the comet’s jets likely lasted 1–3 months — and its mass shedding jumped from hundreds of pounds per second in August to around 4.4 million pounds per second near perihelion.

#Space #Astronomy #3IATLAS

A Russian firm unveiled a humanoid robot dubbed Aldol during a flashy showcase in Moscow, only for it to fall on its face. Figuratively *and* literally.

All to the iconic soundtrack of Rocky, no less.

📽: @drivegreen_livegreen

#futurism #robot #Ai

Australia is generating so much solar power that it's now giving it out for free. Residents in three of the country's states — New South Wales, Queensland, and South Australia, representing approximately 14 million people, or roughly half of the country’s population — will be receiving at least three hours of free solar power every day, even if they don’t have panels mounted to their roofs.⁠
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The federal government even suggested that Australians should use the period to use their most electricity-intensive appliances, from air conditioners to electric car chargers — a renewable energy boon that less sunny parts of the world can only dream of, @guardian reported.⁠
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The initiative was designed to ensure that excess power during peak times doesn’t go unused. With countries making strides in building out solar farms and more households installing solar panels, there’s plenty of energy to go around. However, storing all of this power for later use remains a major logistical challenge.⁠
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To even out energy usage during the day, when solar power generation hits its peak, the government is hoping to encourage residents to shift their maximum usage — which conventionally isn’t in the middle of the day — to when there’s a surplus.⁠

The interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS is back in view after swinging behind the Sun — and new observations are only deepening the mystery. Astronomers have spotted its strange “anti-tail,” a jet of material pointing *toward* the Sun instead of away from it. Most experts say it’s just dust dynamics… but one Harvard astronomer thinks there might be more going on.

According to him, 3I/ATLAS could be firing thruster-like jets to accelerate out of the solar system faster than gravity alone would allow. If true, that would make it the second interstellar object in a row to behave in unusual, non-comet-like ways.

Natural phenomenon — or something else entirely?
The debate is just getting started. 🚀✨

#3IATLAS #Interstellar #SpaceMystery #Astronomy #CosmicPhenomena #AstroNews #ScienceUpdate #SpaceTalk #DeepSpace #Cosmos

A team of astronomers say they may have detected dark matter, the invisible substance thought to make up over 85 percent of all matter in the universe, for the first time in history. The claim is controversial, and the findings, published in a new study in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, will need to be borne out by further observations.⁠
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But at least until it gets picked apart by other physicists, it’s one of the most exciting developments in the hunt for this omnipresent specter haunting the cosmos.⁠
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In their study, the team analyzed fifteen years worth of data that NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope took in an overlooked region near the center of the Milky Way, and found a halo of gamma rays that couldn’t be explained by its surroundings. “The gamma-ray emission component closely matches the shape expected from the dark matter halo," Totani said in a statement.⁠
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The intensity of the emissions, the astronomers found, matches the emissions predicted from the annihilation of weakly interacting massive particles, suggesting that the particles have a mass around 500 times that of a proton. “It turns out that dark matter is a new particle not included in the current standard model of particle physics,” Totani added