space

We will learn much more about how the human body reacts to space

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We may be entering a renaissance for human spaceflight research as record numbers of private citizens go into space — and as scientists improve techniques for gathering data for these intrepid test subjects. A sign that rebirth is imminent appeared earlier this week, when the journal Nature published a small batch of papers detailing the … Read more

Four astronauts spent 3 days in space. Here’s what it did to their bodies and minds.

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Space changes you, even during short trips off-planet. Four people who spent three days outside Earth in September 2021 experienced physical and mental changes that included modest declines in cognitive tests, heightened immune systems and genetic changes within their cells, scientists report in a suite of papers published Tuesday in the journal Nature and some. … Read more

China’s secretive space plane conducts proximity operations with small spacecraft

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HELSINKI – China’s experimental reusable space plane has used a smaller spacecraft to test proximity operations, even capturing the object. China launched its space plane for the third time via a Long March 2F rocket on December 14, 2023. The spacecraft launched an object into orbit, first cataloged by the US Space Force space field … Read more

The pair plasmas found in deep space can now be generated in the laboratory

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How it works: A proton (far left) from the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) accelerator at CERN hits carbon nuclei (small gray spheres). This produces a shower of various elementary particles, including a large number of neutral pions (orange sphere). As the unstable neutral pions decay, they emit two high-energy gamma rays (curly yellow arrows). These … Read more

Space travel makes you fatter

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The journey to the space should be an eye-opening experienceone that gives you a new perspective of humanity and its place in the cosmos. But while you might think that an experience like this would make a person infinitely wiser, a new report discovered that space travel can be real make you a little more … Read more