SpaceX’s Failed Landing Still Ended With a Clean Plop
SpaceX launched its 20th rocket of the year just two days after lofting a record 64 satellites into orbit. On this flight, a brand-new Falcon 9 hoisted a Dragon spacecraft into orbit, bound for the International Space Station. But unlike Monday’s textbook touchdown, today’s landing didn’t quite go as planned. The Falcon’s first stage, the…
You Can Learn Everything Online Except for the Things You Can't
I've seen several quotes that say something like this: "Everything I learned in college can now be found online for free." Is that true or false? Well, it depends, of course, on what you did in college—but I hope it's false. Let's start with some examples that seem to support this idea. I will use…
What Would It Take to Shoot a Cannonball Into Orbit?
Gravity is pretty complicated if you think about it. The motion of a ball falling on the surface of the Earth is caused by the same interaction as the moon orbiting the Earth. That's crazy. It's even crazier to realize that humans figured out that these two motions (falling ball and moon) are from the…
The Spiky Simulator That Will Help Find Oceans in Space
The electric-blue chamber looks like a crowd of punk mohawks or the Night King’s jagged skull. In fact, this 4,306-square-foot room is where antennas are torture-tested before being launched into space. Called the Hybrid European Radio Frequency and Antenna Test Zone, or HERTZ, it’s located in Noordwijk, Netherlands. The 33-foot-high steel walls are studded with…
The Ultimate Carbon-Saving Tip? Travel by Cargo Ship
By the end of June, Kajsa Fernström Nåtby was homesick. The native Swede had just finished a 5-month internship with her country’s diplomatic office near the UN headquarters in Manhattan, darting between debates on migration and ocean plastic. Now, her parents were pleading for her to hop on an 8-hour flight across the Atlantic and…
An Equator Full of Hurricanes Shows a Preview of End Times
The map looks terrifyingly unfamiliar. Not because of the outlines of the continents; those are comforting in their hooks, tails, splotches, and whorls. It’s the storms. Across the globe’s tropics right now, seven superstorms are swirling over oceans. Hurricane Florence is butting into the Carolinas on North America’s southeastern coast. Tropical storms Helene, Isaac, and…
The Next Mass Extinction Might Be About Survival of the Laziest
Survival of the Laziest n. A theory that species with lower metabolisms are less likely to go extinct. If you are a mollusk and you’re reading these words, chances are you’re prone to idleness and sloth. Good for you! In a new study of shellfish from the past 5 million years, scientists found that species with…
The WIRED Guide to Climate Change
The world is busted. For decades, scientists have carefully accumulated data that confirms what we hoped wasn’t true: The greenhouse gas emissions that have steadily spewed from cars and planes and factories, the technologies that powered a massive period of economic growth, came at an enormous cost to the planet’s health. Today, we know that…
Here's What Astronauts See When a Rocket Aborts Mid-Flight
Nick Hague spent 20 years dreaming of getting into space, first as an Air Force test pilot, then as a NASA astronaut since 2013. He got his big chance to blast into orbit last Friday aboard a Soyuz spacecraft launching from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin were expecting a…
A SpaceX Booster Went for a Swim and Came Back as Scrap Metal
Port Canaveral, east of Orlando, was a hub of activity this past week as SpaceX officials attempted to rescue a wayward booster that had fallen into the ocean just off Florida’s space coast. A crowd of onlookers showed up day after day to glean insights into the secretive company’s recovery efforts. Some people even booked…