Category: Space
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Reading a Rock for Ghosts: On Defining “Life” and Inferring It from Mars
NASA’s news release reports that Perseverance cored a mudstone in Jezero Crater whose chemistry and textures may record potential biosignatures—not proof of life, but suggestive clues. What follows are my thoughts about why, if we struggle to define “life” at all, the attempt to infer past life from such clues is far more complex—and why…
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Flight 10, Starship, and the Art of Learning by Fire
If learning is doing, and doing spaceflight is doing really hot doing, then SpaceX is having a masterclass. The tenth integrated test flight of Starship (also called IFT-10) pushed a number of boundaries: new heat shield tiles, mock payload deployment, booster landing experiments, engine relights, etc. Many things succeeded; others revealed gaps (literally) – especially…
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From Sci-Fi to Orbit: How the U.S. Military’s Latest Launch is Revolutionizing Navigation Without GPS
Imagine a thunderous roar piercing the night sky, followed by a sonic boom that shakes windows across Florida. That’s exactly what happened on August 21, 2025, when a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39A, carrying the U.S. Space Force’s secretive X-37B spaceplane into orbit. Now, nearly two weeks…
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SpaceX’s Starship Flight 10: MarkSetBot Buoy Makes a Splash in the Indian Ocean Landing
Starship Flight 10 and the Indian Ocean Landing Context SpaceX’s Starship rocket system achieved a major milestone on its 10th test flight in late August 2025. This fully stacked Starship (with its Super Heavy booster) lifted off from Starbase, Texas on August 26, 2025, and for the first time the Starship upper stage survived atmospheric…