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China Makes History Again: Chang'e-6 Returns with Groundbreaking Moon Samples

In a remarkable achievement, China has successfully collected samples from the far side of the moon, marking a significant milestone in space exploration. The Chang'e-6 mission, launched on May 3, touched down in the Apollo crater within the vast South Pole-Aitken basin on June 1. During its brief but productive stay, the spacecraft gathered approximately 2 kilograms of lunar material using a scoop and drill. The samples, now stored in an ascent vehicle, are expected to return to Earth on June 25, landing in Inner Mongolia. This historic achievement not only demonstrates China's space program prowess but also provides scientists with a unique opportunity to unravel the mysteries of the moon's formation and evolution.   Achievements: - *First-ever samples from the far side*: Chang'e-6 successfully collects lunar material from the moon's less-explored hemisphere. - *Second successful farside landing*: China builds on its 2019 achievement with...
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Astronomers Revealed the Black Hole at the Center of Milky Way

The black hole is named Sagittarius A* (pronounced “A-star”), and the reveal of its image received an international rollout this morning in simultaneous press conferences held by the National Science Foundation (NSF) at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., and the European Southern Observatory headquarters in Garching, Germany. The image represents 3.5 million gigabytes of data taken at millimeter wavelengths by eight radio telescopes around the world. “It took several years to refine our image and confirm what we had,” said Feryal Özel, an astronomer at the University of Arizona in Tucson, at the NSF press conference. “But we prevailed.” The data that went into making the M87* and Sgr A* images were taken back in April 2017 during the EHT’s inaugural observing campaign. Despite its distance, M87’s central black hole appears roughly the same size on the sky as that of our own galaxy’s. Though M87* is about 2,000 times more distant, it is also about 1,500 times large...
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Structure of the Universe

The structure of the universe is a complex and fascinating topic that has intrigued scientists and laypeople alike for centuries.  It is a vast expanse of space that contains everything that we know of, from stars and planets to galaxies and superclusters. Understanding the structure of the universe is essential to understanding our place in it and the fundamental laws of nature that govern it. At the largest scale, the universe appears to be homogeneous and isotropic, meaning that it appears the same in all directions and at all points in space. This is known as the cosmological principle. However, at smaller scales, the structure of the universe is highly varied and complex. The basic building blocks of the universe are subatomic particles, such as protons, neutrons, and electrons. These particles combine to form atoms, which in turn combine to form molecules, and so on. At larger scales, these molecules combine to form stars, planets, and other celestial bodies. The universe is...
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Who is James Webb NASA?

James Webb, in full James Edwin Webb, (born October 7, 1906, Tally Ho, North Carolina, U.S.—died March 27, 1992, Washington, D.C.), American public servant and administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) during the Apollo program (1961–68). After graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1928, Webb became a marine pilot. He began his government career in 1932 as a congressional aide in Washington, D.C., and from 1934 to 1936 he studied law at George Washington University. He worked for Sperry Gyroscope from 1936 to 1944, when he reentered the Marine Corps for the remainder of World War II. During the administration of Pres. Harry Truman (1945–53), Webb was director of the Bureau of the Budget and undersecretary of state. When Truman left office, he went to work for the Kerr-McGee Oil Company in Oklahoma. Webb became the administrator of NASA in 1961, just months before Pres. John F. Kennedy announced the U.S. commi...
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Jupiter Like Planet Discovered By NASA's Citizen Scientist

The signature for the newly discovered planet was hiding in data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS. Using TESS data, scientists look for changes in brightness of nearby stars, which could indicate the presence of orbiting planets. Jacobs is part of a group of citizen scientists who look at plots of TESS data, showing the change in a star’s brightness over time, in search of new planets. While professional astronomers use algorithms to scan tens of thousands of data points from stars automatically, these citizen scientists use a program called LcTools, created by Alan R. Schmitt, to inspect telescope data by eye. That’s why Jacobs’ group, which includes several citizen scientists and two veteran astronomers, calls themselves the Visual Survey Group. Many of them met while working on Planet Hunters, a NASA-funded citizen science project through Zooniverse that focused on data from NASA’s Kepler spacecraft. On February 1, 2020, Jacobs happened to notice a plot ...
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