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The first international partnership in space wasn’t the International Space Station (ISS). It wasn’t even the Shuttle-Mir series of missions. It was the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. On July 15, 1975, an Apollo spacecraft launched carrying a crew of three and docked two days later on July 17th with a Soyuz spacecraft and its crew of two. Designed to test the compatibility of rendezvous and docking systems and the possibility of an international space rescue, the nine-day Apollo-Soyuz mission brought together two former spaceflight rivals: the United States and the Soviet Union. The United States launched an Apollo Command and Service Module on a Saturn IB rocket. The Apollo spacecraft was nearly identical to the type that orbited the Moon and later carried US astronauts to Skylab. The Soyuz was the primary Soviet spacecraft used for manned flight since its introduction in 1967. The docking module was designed and constructed by NASA to serve as an airlock and transfer corridor between the two craft. During nearly two days of joint activities, the mission’s two Soviet cosmonauts and three US astronauts carried out five joint experiments and exchanged commemorative items. The successful Apollo-Soyuz Test Project paved the way for future international partnerships.

A new University of Colorado study suggests that supernovae in the past may have triggered climate change events here on Earth. According to the model, a sudden influx of high energy photons from a supernova could thin the ozone layer, which shields the Earth from the Sun’s rays. Simultaneously, the radiation could degrade methane in the stratosphere, a major contributor to the greenhouse effect that keeps the Earth warm. Put together, these interactions would dampen greenhouse warming and increase the amount of ultraviolet radiation that reaches Earth from the Sun. The study suggests that knock-on effects could include selective animal extinctions, increased wildfires, and global cooling.

Welcome to the night sky report for July 2025 -- Your guide to the constellations, deep sky objects, planets, and celestial events that are observable during the month. Venus shines brightly in the east each morning a couple of hours before sunrise, with the Pleiades and the bright stars Aldebaran and Capella. Mars sits in the west, about 20 degrees above the horizon as twilight fades and sets a couple of hours after dark. Jupiter starts to become visible low in the east in the hour before sunrise after mid-month. You'll notice it rises a bit higher each day through August, quickly approaching closer to Venus each morning. Mercury is visible very, very low in the west the first week or so in July, but sets quickly after sunset. Saturn rises around midnight and climbs to a point high in the south as dawn approaches. July is also a prime time to view the Milky Way in all its glory. Find the constellation Scorpius to identify the reddish supergiant star Antares, which will lead you to the globular star cluster M4 (NGC 6121). M22 (NGC 6656) in the constellation Sagitarius is one of the brightest globular clusters in the sky and is visible to the naked eye. Keep observing around the group of stars commonly known as the Teapot and you’ll be looking toward the center of the Milky Way. In that direction, you can see the Lagoon Nebula (M8, NGC 6523), the Omega Nebula (M17, NGC 6618), and the Trifid Nebula (M20, NGC 6514). Two open star clusters, the Butterfly Cluster (M6, NGC 6405) and the Ptolemy Cluster (M7, NGC 6475), can be found on the end of the constellation Scorpius, just above the stinger. The night sky is truly a celestial showcase. Get outside and explore its wonders from your own backyard.

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, jointly funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and the US Department of Energy (DOE) is a brand new astronomy and astrophysics facility that has been built on Cerro Pachón in Chile. It’s named after US astronomer Vera Rubin, who provided the first convincing evidence for the existence of dark matter. Rubin Observatory is the first of its kind: its mirror design, camera sensitivity, telescope speed, and computing infrastructure are each in an entirely new category. The 8.4-meter Simonyi Survey Telescope at Rubin Observatory, equipped with the LSST Camera — the largest digital camera ever built — will take detailed images of the southern hemisphere sky for the next 10 years, covering the entire sky from the southern hemisphere every few nights and creating an ultra-wide, ultra-high-definition, time-lapse record — the largest astronomical movie of all time. This unique movie will bring the night sky to life, yielding a treasure trove of discoveries: asteroids and comets, pulsating stars, and supernova explosions. With Rubin we will gain a better understanding of our Universe, delve into the mysteries of dark energy and dark matter, and reveal answers to questions we have yet to imagine.

A team led by Sihao Cheng of the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, NJ, has discovered an extraordinary Trans-Neptunian Object (TNO) named 2017 OF201 at the edge of our Solar System. Trans-Neptunian Objects are minor planets that orbit the Sun at a greater average distance than the orbit of Neptune. The TNO is potentially large enough to qualify as a dwarf planet, the same category as the much more well-known Pluto. The new object is one of the most distant visible objects in our Solar System and, significantly, suggests that the empty section of space thought to exist beyond Neptune in the Kuiper Belt is not, in fact, empty at all. The new TNO is special for two reasons: its extreme orbit and its large size. The object’s aphelion -- the farthest point in its orbit around the Sun -- is more than 1600 times that of the Earth’s orbit. Its perihelion -- the closest point in its orbit around the Sun -- is 44.5 times that of the Earth’s orbit, similar to Pluto's orbit. The presence of this single object, which at present is at its closest point in its orbit, suggests that there could be another hundred or so similar objects out there with similar elongated orbits. But they are just too far away to be detected right now.

When Gemini IV astronaut Ed White emerged from his spacecraft into the blackness of space on June 3, 1965, he became the first American to walk in space. For more than 20 minutes, White maneuvered himself around the Gemini spacecraft while it traveled from over Hawaii to the Gulf of Mexico -- making his orbital stroll 6500 miles long. White was attached to the spacecraft by a 23 foot long tether line wrapped in gold tape. The visor of his helmet was gold plated to protect him from the unfiltered rays of the Sun. In his right hand, White carried a Hand Held Self Maneuvering Unit, which he used to move about the weightless environment of space. Unfortunately, the gas powered unit ran out of fuel after only 3 minutes. For the remainder of the space walk White maneuvered by twisting his body and tugging on the umbilical cord. Tragically, Lieutenant Colonel White and his crewmates Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee died on January 27, 1967, in the Apollo 1 flash fire during a launch pad test at Kennedy Space Center.

Welcome to the night sky report for June 2025 -- Your guide to the constellations, deep sky objects, planets, and celestial events that are observable during the month. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn make appearances during the month. The bright central bulge of our home galaxy, the Milky Way, is visible all night in June, continuing through August. It is best observed from dark sky locations far from bright city lights and appears as a faint, cloud-like band arching across the sky toward the south. During the month, look for the Hercules constellation, which will lead you to a globular star cluster with hundreds of thousands of densely packed stars. Globular cluster M13 (the Hercules Cluster, NGC 6205) is best observed with a telescope, but binoculars will reveal it as a fuzzy spot. You can also spot Draco the dragon, which will point you to the Cat’s Eye Nebula (C6, NGC 6543). The night sky is truly a celestial showcase. Get outside and explore its wonders from your own backyard.

New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) researchers are developing new ways to predict when the powerful magnetic energy from Solar flares and Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) will reach Earth. The team is developing AI-powered space weather forecasting capabilities that could offer Solar researchers a new window into the complex magnetic processes in regions of the Sun's atmosphere that trigger such eruptions, and to this point, have rarely been observed. According to the researchers, the new AI-powered forecasting system could boost early-warning detection of these eruptive events on Earth by days, while offering vital insights to the space weather science community as activity on our nearest star ramps up over the course of the current 11-year Solar cycle, which began in 2019.

Throughout the history of the Universe, countless supermassive black holes have engaged in a volatile dance. These behemoths spiral around each other faster and faster until they crash together. Scientists suspect that the resulting collisions are so powerful that they literally generate ripples that spread out into the Universe. To date, detailed measurements only capture how gravitational waves move in a single direction— waves that are either flowing directly toward us or away from us. This new research at the University of Colorado – Boulder is designed to measure how gravitational waves also move from side-to-side and up and down as compared to Earth, since gravitational waves literally operate in three dimensions. The gravitational waves stretch and squeeze spacetime along our line of sight, but they should also cause objects to appear to move back and forth in the sky if the researchers’ hypothesis is correct.

Welcome to the night sky report for May 2025 -- Your guide to the constellations, deep sky objects, planets, and celestial events that are observable during the month. The planets to look for in May are Mars and Jupiter. They're visible for a couple of hours after sunset in the western sky.  Low in the eastern sky each morning you'll find bright Venus paired with much fainter Saturn. They start the month close together, but Saturn pulls away and rises higher over the course of the month.  Also, the first week of May brings the annual Eta Aquarid meteors, peaking on May 6th. In May, we are looking away from the crowded, dusty plane of our own galaxy toward a region where the sky is brimming with distant galaxies. Locate Virgo to find a concentration of roughly 2000 galaxies and search for Coma Berenices to identify many more. Coma Berenices is a great target for binoculars. Look for galaxies like M104 (Sombrero Galaxy), M87 (Virgo A Galaxy), and M64 (Black Eye Galaxy). The night sky is truly a celestial showcase. Get outside and explore its wonders from your own backyard.

A new study suggests that the Universe may be rotating -- just imperceptibly slowly. If true, this new finding could help solve one of astronomy’s biggest puzzles -- the “Hubble Tension.” Current models say the Universe expands evenly in all directions, with no sign of rotation. This idea fits most of what astronomers observe. But it doesn’t explain the so-called Hubble Tension, a long-standing disagreement between two ways of measuring how fast the Universe is expanding. To try and reconcile this difference, researchers at the University of Hawaiʻi developed a mathematical model of the Universe and followed the standard rules. Nothing unexpected was uncovered. Then they decided to add a tiny amount of rotation. That small change made a big difference.

Fifty Five years ago today, on April 13, 1970, while en route to the Moon, an oxygen tank in the Service Module of Apollo 13 exploded. The lunar landing and moonwalk, which would have been executed by astronauts Jim Lovell and Fred Haise, were immediately aborted. NASA now had a much bigger challenge on their hands – How to get the three Apollo astronauts home alive. As clean oxygen and vital electrical power started to run out in the Command Module (CM), a dedicated team of flight controllers and engineers at Mission Control in Houston focused all of their efforts on developing a plan to shelter the crew in the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) and use it as a “lifeboat,” while conserving sufficient resources, like air and water, to bring the spacecraft and its crew back home safely. By the grace of God, splashdown occurred in the Pacific Ocean on April 17, after a harrowing flight that lasted nearly six days.

Welcome to the night sky report for April 2025 -- Your guide to the constellations, deep sky objects, planets, and celestial events that are observable during the month. Enjoy observing Jupiter, Mars, and Venus in the morning and evening sky. In mid-April, look for the Lyrid meteors. Then hunt for the ancient ball of stars known as globular cluster M3 (NGC 5272). The night sky is truly a celestial showcase. Get outside and explore its wonders from your own backyard.

Does time exist? The answer to this question may seem obvious -- Of course it does. Just look at a calendar or a clock. But developments in physics suggest that time may not exist and we should start to take that possibility seriously. But trying to get by in a world without time seems positively disastrous. Our lives are built around time. We plan for the future, in light of what we know about the past. For example, we hold people accountable for their past actions, with an eye to holding them to account later on, in the future. But what’s the point of acting to bring about a change in the future when, in a very real sense, there is no future to act for? Also, what’s the point of holding someone to account for a past action, when there was no past and so, apparently, no such action? It’s easy for philosophers and physicists to twist themselves into a pretzel when trying to think this through, but that doesn’t stop them from trying.

Sixty years ago today, on March 23, 1965, a Titan 2 rocket launched into space NASA astronauts Virgil "Gus" Grissom and John Young inside their Gemini III capsule, kicking off the first two-manned, Earth-orbiting spaceflight of the Gemini Program. Gemini III (GT-3 or Gemini Titan 3) was the first US capsule launched with two astronauts onboard. The Gemini Program was conceived as an intermediate step between the one-manned Mercury and three-manned Apollo Programs. The program was developed to determine astronauts’ reaction to long duration flights, to develop the rendezvous and docking methods that would later be used in the Apollo Program, and to establish and perfect landing and reentry techniques. Gus Grissom had piloted the second Mercury flight “Liberty Bell 7” on July 21, 1961 and would later be named to serve as command pilot for the Apollo 1 mission, the first 3-manned Apollo flight. Tragically, Grissom and fellow crew members Ed White and Roger Chaffee perished in a flash fire inside the Apollo capsule during ground testing on January 27, 1967.