Virgin Orbit is a company based in California that launches satellites into orbit. The company confirmed that its LauncherOne rocket reached space during its second launch demonstration held on Sunday. The mission placed ten payloads into orbit for NASA's Launch Services Program.
Rumors have been swelling that Toyota is looking to add another hopped up compact car to its GR line of sports cars. Americans can't get the cool GR Yaris, which we are rather bummed about. Rumor has suggested that Toyota will launch a GR Corolla sometime in 2023. Toyota has filed a trademark for the GR Corolla name, and insiders claim the car is definitely coming.
Researchers have identified what they say is one of the oldest planetary systems that has ever been discovered. The planetary system has a rocky planet known as TOI-561b orbiting a star that is 10 billion years old. That star is more than twice as old as the sun, and researchers say it shows planets have been forming since the early days of the universe.
A new study was recently published by principal investigators from Canada and Tanzania working with partners in Africa, North America, and Europe. The entire team is working together to describe a large assemblage of stone tools, fossil bones, and chemical proxies obtained from dental and plant materials. Researchers on the study also examined tiny microscopic bits of silica left by plants, ancient pollen, and airborne charcoal resulting from natural fires retrieved from an ancient riverbed and Lake outcrops on the Serengeti plains.
NASA is celebrating a milestone for the Curiosity Rover that's been on the surface of the Red Planet since August 6, 2012. Curiosity has now spent 3000 Martian days, or sols, exploring Mars. Curiosity has been rolling up Mount Sharp, which is a three-mile-tall mountain it has been exploring since 2014.
For a while, it seemed as if the future of owning an automobile would be a subscription where you paid an ongoing monthly fee and had access to multiple car models from a single brand. Subscription programs were available from BMW, Audi, Mercedes-Benz, and others for a while. BMW recently announced that it was canceling its subscription service that began in 2018 in Nashville, Tennessee.
Yesterday we mentioned that NASA TV would be airing the hot fire test of the SLS core stage rocket meant to push Artemis I to the moon. The core stage rocket was fueled and attached to a test sand with the intent of firing its quartet of massive rocket engines for the entire duration of time it would take for the rocket to reach orbit. However, things didn't go well, and the SLS core stage rocket ended its test 67 seconds after it began.
Toyota has a new racing car for the 2021 FIA World Endurance Championship. The vehicle is called the GR010 Hybrid and what's more exciting than a new racing car is that reports claim a street-legal version will launch in the near future. The vehicle seen below is the 2021 GR010 Hybrid racing car, but it's unclear what exactly the street-legal version might look like.
Glancing at the image below, it's clear that there are huge numbers of stars in the Milky Way. Astronomers say that the galaxy is filled with streams of stars, but one of those streams appears to have nearly 500 stars inside. Astronomers, on a new study, have discovered 8292 stellar streams in the galaxy.
One of the next major tests for the SLS rocket core stage will happen on January 16, which is today if you're not close to a calendar. The image above shows the core stage rocket sitting on the test stand at the NASA Stennis Space Center as it's being fueled with liquid hydrogen. The flame burning in the left of the image is liquid hydrogen being safely vented and burned as it warms and boils off during a rehearsal countdown for the hot fire test conducted on December 20.
Ford has officially confirmed that it is delaying the delivery of hundreds of Mach-E electric vehicles to perform additional quality checks. A very limited number of Mach-E electric vehicles were delivered late last year. With Ford saying it was delaying deliveries to perform additional quality checks after delivering those vehicles last year, it's easy to wonder if the owners of those vehicles discovered some issues.
If you're familiar with dire wolves, you're probably familiar with them from "Game of Thrones." It would be easy to think that the dire wolf was something that George R. R. Martin came up with in his imagination, but they were real creatures that scientists have known existed since the mid-19th century. The dire wolf went extinct long ago.