TYB
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
February 2, 2025
Comet G3 ATLAS Disintegrates
What's happening to Comet G3 ATLAS? After passing near the Sun in mid-January, the head of the comet has become dimmer and dimmer. By late January, Comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) had become a headless wonder – even though it continued to show impressive tails after sunset in the skies of Earth's Southern Hemisphere. Pictured are images of Comet G3 ATLAS on successive January nights taken from Río Hurtado, Chile. Clearly, the comet's head is brighter and more centrally condensed on the earlier days (left) than on later days (right). A key reason is likely that the comet's nucleus of ice and rock, at the head's center, has fragmented. Comet G3 ATLAS passed well inside the orbit of planet Mercury when at its solar closest, a distance that where heat destroys many comets. Some of comet G3 ATLAS' scattering remains will continue to orbit the Sun.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
NASA's Perseverance rover finds 'Silver Mountain' in Mars
Updated: 01 February, 2025 04:47 PM -8 GMT
NASA's Perseverance rover has collected a rock sample with unusual textures from Mars' Jezero Crater.
The sample, nicknamed "Silver Mountain," is the rover's 26th and is unlike any previously collected. It has been sealed in a tube for eventual return to Earth.
"My 26th sample, known as "Silver Mountain," has textures unlike anything we've seen before. I've sealed the rock core in a sample tube so it can be analyzed in labs on Earth in the future," NASA said in a tweet.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover searches for signs of ancient microbial life, to advance NASA's quest to explore the past habitability of Mars.
The rover is gathering samples to help scientists learn about Mars' geological history, past climate, and potential for past life.
NASA aims to bring the samples back to Earth between 2035 and 2039, with a decision on the retrieval method expected next year.
Perseverance recently finished exploring Jezero Crater, a location believed to have once held environments possibly suitable for microbial life.
The rover is now traversing the crater's northern rim, where it will examine four geologically interesting sites and collect additional samples.
Perseverance has travelled over 20 miles since landing in February 2021, and its route and sample locations are tracked on an interactive map on NASA's website. The samples are collected using a coring drill and stored in titanium tubes.
Recently, NASA's Osiris-Rex spacecraft also returned 122 grams of dust and pebbles from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu, delivering the sample canister to the Utah desert in 2023 before swooping off after another space rock.
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/global-trends/nasas-perseverance-rover-finds-silver-mountain-in-mars-heres-what-we-know/articleshow/117861486.cms
https://twitter.com/NASAPersevere/status/1884673654740705646
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance/mars-rock-samples/
NASA Juno Mission Spots Most Powerful Volcanic Activity on Io to Date
Jan. 28, 2025
Even by the standards of Io, the most volcanic celestial body in the solar system, recent events observed on the Jovian moon are extreme.
Scientists with NASA’s Juno mission have discovered a volcanic hot spot in the southern hemisphere of Jupiter’s moon Io.
The hot spot is not only larger than Earth’s Lake Superior, but it also belches out eruptions six times the total energy of all the world’s power plants.
The discovery of this massive feature comes courtesy of Juno’s Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument, contributed by the Italian Space Agency.
“Juno had two really close flybys of Io during Juno’s extended mission,” said the mission’s principal investigator, Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.
“And while each flyby provided data on the tormented moon that exceeded our expectations, the data from this latest — and more distant — flyby really blew our minds.
This is the most powerful volcanic event ever recorded on the most volcanic world in our solar system — so that’s really saying something.”
The source of Io’s torment: Jupiter. About the size of Earth’s Moon, Io is extremely close to the mammoth gas giant, and its elliptical orbit whips it around Jupiter once every 42.5 hours.
As the distance varies, so does the planet’s gravitational pull, which leads to the moon being relentlessly squeezed.
The result: immense energy from frictional heating that melts portions of Io’s interior, resulting in a seemingly endless series of lava plumes and ash venting into its atmosphere from the estimated 400 volcanoes that riddle its surface.
Close Flybys
Designed to capture the infrared light (which isn’t visible to the human eye) emerging from deep inside Jupiter, JIRAM probes the gas giant’s weather layer, peering 30 to 45 miles (50 to 70 kilometers) below its cloud tops.
But since NASA extended Juno’s mission, the team has also used the instrument to study the moons Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.
During its extended mission, Juno’s trajectory passes by Io every other orbit, flying over the same part of the moon each time.
Previously, the spacecraft made close flybys of Io in December 2023 and February 2024, getting within about 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) of its surface.
The latest flyby took place on Dec. 27, 2024, bringing the spacecraft within about 46,200 miles (74,400 kilometers) of the moon, with the infrared instrument trained on Io’s southern hemisphere.
Io Brings the Heat
“JIRAM detected an event of extreme infrared radiance — a massive hot spot — in Io’s southern hemisphere so strong that it saturated our detector,” said Alessandro Mura, a Juno co-investigator from the National Institute for Astrophysics in Rome.
“However, we have evidence what we detected is actually a few closely spaced hot spots that emitted at the same time, suggestive of a subsurface vast magma chamber system.
The data supports that this is the most intense volcanic eruption ever recorded on Io.”
The JIRAM science team estimates the as-yet-unnamed feature spans 40,000 square miles (100,000 square kilometers).
The previous record holder was Io’s Loki Patera, a lava lake of about 7,700 square miles (20,000 square kilometers).
The total power value of the new hot spot’s radiance measured well above 80 trillion watts.
Picture This
The feature was also captured by the mission’s JunoCam visible light camera. The team compared JunoCam images from the two previous Io flybys with those the instrument collected on Dec. 27.
And while these most recent images are of lower resolution since Juno was farther away, the relative changes in surface coloring around the newly discovered hot spot were clear.
Such changes in Io’s surface are known in the planetary science community to be associated with hot spots and volcanic activity.
An eruption of this magnitude is likely to leave long-lived signatures.
Other large eruptions on Io have created varied features, such as pyroclastic deposits (composed rock fragments spewed out by a volcano), small lava flows that may be fed by fissures, and volcanic-plume deposits rich in sulfur and sulfur dioxide.
Juno will use an upcoming, more distant flyby of Io on March 3 to look at the hot spot again and search for changes in the landscape. Earth-based observations of this region of the moon may also be possible.
“While it is always great to witness events that rewrite the record books, this new hot spot can potentially do much more,” said Bolton. “The intriguing feature could improve our understanding of volcanism not only on Io but on other worlds as well.”
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-juno-mission-spots-most-powerful-volcanic-activity-on-io-to-date/
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/juno/
Japan launches navigation satellite on nation's 1st mission of 2025
February 2, 2025
An H3 rocket launched the Michibiki 6 spacecraft from Tanegashima Space Center on Sunday at 3:30 a.m. EST (0830 GMT; 5:30 p.m. local Japan time).
The H3 successfully sent the 10,800-pound (4,900-kilogram) Michibiki 6 to geostationary transfer orbit, deploying it there 29 minutes after launch as planned.
After the satellite makes its way to its final orbit and finishes its checkout phase, it will become the fifth member of Japan's Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS), which became operational in November 2018.
"This system is compatible with GPS satellites and can be utilized with them in an integrated fashion. In this way, the satellite positioning service environment was advanced dramatically," Japanese officials wrote in a description of the QZSS project.
"QZSW can be used even in the Asia-Oceania regions with longitudes close to Japan, so its usage will be expanded to other countries in these regions as well," they added.
Sunday's liftoff was the fifth ever for the two-stage H3, which was developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to replace Japan's workhorse H-2A rocket.
The H3 failed on its debut mission in March 2023, resulting in the loss of an Earth-observing satellite, but its four most recent flights have been successful.
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/japan-h3-rocket-launch-michibiki-6-navigation-satellite
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZkj9FkYMyQ
Giant ice age landforms discovered deep beneath North Sea revealed in amazing detail
February 2, 2025
Researchers have discovered huge landforms deep beneath the North Sea that suggest the region was swallowed by a giant ice sheet toward the middle of the last ice age.
The scientists captured these landforms in "clear and amazing" detail buried under 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) of mud, Christine Batchelor, a senior lecturer in physical geography at Newcastle University in the U.K. and co-author of a new study describing the landforms, told Live Science.
The images reveal patterns in the seabed consistent with the advance and retreat of a single, colossal ice sheet that existed roughly 1 million years ago, contradicting theories that smaller ice sheets repeatedly expanded and retracted around that time.
Those theories were based on abundant scratch marks, which some researchers thought had been caused by glaciers. But it now turns out they originated from strong ocean currents.
"We only see conclusive evidence for one big ice advance during that time period," Batchelor said, adding that places outside the current study area may still hold proof of several smaller ice sheets.
Batchelor and her colleagues used high-resolution sound wave data to reveal the landforms.
They weren't searching for anything in particular, Batchelor said, and were surprised to find evidence of a single grounded ice sheet — an ice sheet that sits on land rather than water.
Grounded ice sheets move sediment around as they grow and shrink, creating erosional and depositional landforms from which scientists can reconstruct a region's glacial past.
"When the ice is advancing, it produces streamlined, elongated features that are sculpting the sediment in the direction of ice flow," Batchelor said.
"When the ice is retreating, you get features that show the imprint of that grounded ice margin as it steps back, so those tend to be transverse to the ice flow direction."
The giant ice sheet formed during a period of the last ice age known as the mid-Pleistocene transition (MPT) that lasted between 1.3 million and 700,000 years ago. (The ice age itself began approximately 2.6 million years ago and ended 11,700 years ago.)
Research has focused on the MPT because it marks a time when glacial periods suddenly became more intense and switched from occurring every 40,000 years to every 100,000 years.
"The main reason that we're interested in this broad time period around 1 million years ago is because it's a time when we have a shift in climate going on," Batchelor said.
"The glacial periods get longer and they get more intense, so there's quite a lot of work that is focused on trying to figure out why that shift happened."
The new study, published Dec. 13, 2024 in the journal Science Advances, doesn't provide an answer yet, but understanding where the ice extended to during the MPT could help researchers build a picture of the conditions that led to this global shift in climate.
The landforms indicate that the ice sheet covered present-day Norway and extended toward the British Isles. Some of the imprints left by its retreat resemble crevasse-squeeze ridges — landforms produced when an ice sheet "sits down" into soft sediment immediately before it retreats, pushing the sediment into cracks at the bottom of the ice, Batchelor said. Crevasse-squeeze ridges are preserved when water undercuts the ice, cleanly lifting it off the sediment.
Over the millennia following the retreat of the ice sheet, the landforms were covered in mud and hidden away.
The new findings offer clues about how ice sheets grow and decay in response to climate.
"Being able to understand and to model exactly where those ice sheets were helps us to understand those feedbacks which are still going on, albeit in a different form, today," Batchelor said.
https://www.space.com/the-universe/earth/giant-ice-age-landforms-discovered-deep-beneath-north-sea-revealed-in-amazing-detail
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adq6089
Indian navigation satellite stuck in transfer orbit after propulsion failure
February 2, 2025
A recently launched Indian navigation satellite is stranded in a transfer orbit after the failure of its onboard propulsion system and could soon renter.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) stated Feb. 2 that the NVS-02 satellite, launched Jan. 28 (Eastern time), suffered a thruster failure that is keeping the spacecraft from raising its orbit as planned.
According to a statement posted on ISRO’s website but not otherwise publicized by the agency, “the orbit raising operations towards positioning the satellite to the designated orbital slot could not be carried out as the valves for admitting the oxidizer to fire the thrusters for orbit raising did not open.”
The spacecraft launched on a Geostationary Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) Mark 2 rocket from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre.
The launch was designed to place NVS-02 into a geostationary transfer orbit with a perigee of 170 kilometers and apogee of 36,577 kilometers.
Latest data from the Space Track catalog maintained by the U.S. military show that that satellite remains in a similar orbit, with a perigee of 165 kilometers and apogee of 37,582 kilometers.
ISRO noted in its statement that other systems on the spacecraft were working well, including a successful deployment of its solar panels.
That statement, though, suggested that ISRO had given up on fixing the propulsion system on the satellite.
“The satellite systems are healthy and the satellite is currently in elliptical orbit. Alternate mission strategies for utilising the satellite for navigation in an elliptical orbit is being worked out,” ISRO stated.
However, the low perigee of NVS-02 would put the spacecraft in danger of reentering soon because of the high atmospheric drag at that low altitude.
It was not clear if there are alternative propulsion systems on the spacecraft that could raise the perigee enough to avoid a reentry in the near term.
NVS-02 is based on ISRO’s I-2K satellite bus, which has been used for other Indian communications and navigation satellites operating in geostationary orbit.
The spacecraft had a launch mass of 2,250 kilograms. The spacecraft was intended to operate at 111.75 degrees east in GEO, replacing the IRNSS-1E spacecraft there.
It is the second of five satellites planned for India’s Navigation with Indian Constellation, or NavIC, program to provide positioning, navigation and timing services in India and the surrounding region.
The first, NVS-01, launched in 2023 and is in operation in GEO.
https://spacenews.com/indian-navigation-satellite-stuck-in-transfer-orbit-after-propulsion-failure/
https://www.isro.gov.in/GSLV-F15_NVS-02_Mission.html
Magnificent communication: Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin tests Verizon satellite service in new ad
February 2, 2025
As someone who is no stranger to comm dropouts on a planetary scale, Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin has teamed up with Verizon to help promote the company's satellite-based solution to cell service "dead zones."
The now 95-year-old astronaut, who in 1969 became one of the first humans to step foot on the lunar surface, appears in a new Verizon ad alongside Paul Marcarelli, the original "Can you hear me now?" Test Man to ask, "Can you text me now?"
"Fifty-six years ago, I was one of the select few that made it into space and the first team to help America conquer the moon," said Aldrin in a statement released by Verizon.
"Back then, space was the great unknown, and now we've never been closer to it. I can't look up in the sky without seeing a satellite fly by. It's remarkable to see how far the human race — and technology — has come."
In the commercial, Aldrin is seen wearing a silver jacket adorned with the Apollo 11 mission patch while planting a Verizon "satellite powered" red and yellow flag at remote areas around Earth.
At each stop, whether it be on the desert floor of a canyon, at the base of a snow-covered mountain or in an area of the wildness already marked as a "dead zone," the retired U.S. Air Force General and Doctor of Astronautics uses his Verizon-issued Android smartphone to show that he can still send texts.
Aldrin's last test is shown as looping out around the moon — past an American flag planted on its surface — to a satellite in Earth orbit.
There, a spacesuited Marcarelli (sans helmet) receives Aldrin's message and reacts, "That's my line." "It's been 10 years since I last asked America 'Can you hear me now?'
Back then dead zones were everywhere and it's safe to say today they are only in the most remote places like the dark [sic] side of the moon," said Marcarelli in Verizon's release, making the common mistake of describing the far side of the moon as the non-existent "dark" side. "Satellite is for sure the next frontier."
Verizon customers with "select new model phones with updated software" can send texts — such as emergency SOS messages, including their location — when they are in areas inside the United States without cellular coverage.
According to the company, its U.S. network provides coverage to more than 99% of the places where people "live, work and play," but its satellite service now covers the "very few places" throughout the country where customers cannot connect.
For the service to work, the phones — which include Google's Pixel 9 series and Samsung's Galaxy S25 — must be outdoors with a line of sight to the Viasat, Echostar or other satellites that are part of the Skylo satellite connectivity service.
The service may not work in parts of Alaska.
In addition, AST SpaceMobile, a satellite designer and manufacturer based in Midland, Texas, has a $100 million commitment from Verizon to provide direct-to-cellular satellite service when needed for Verizon's customers.
This week, the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) authorized AST to begin testing its service in the United States.
This approval enables the first five of AST's commercial BlueBird satellites, already operating in low Earth orbit, to test connections with Verizon smartphones supporting voice, full data and video applications, as well as other native cellular capabilities, without the need of any specialized software or device support or update.
"That's one giant leap for connectivity," says Aldrin in the commercial.
AST SpaceMobile also has an agreement to provide space-based network services to AT&T and its customers. Similarly, T-Mobile partnered with SpaceX to use the Starlink broadband internet constellation and its direct-to-cell capabilities.
This is not Aldrin's first appearance in a commercial. Among his past spots are ads filmed for IBM and YouTube TV in 2019; a commercial for Quaker Oats in 2016; and a 2015 promotion to visit Switzerland.
In 1987, Aldrin joined Mercury astronauts Scott Carpenter and Gordon Cooper to advertise the Commodore Amiga 500 home computer and in 1972, a year after he left NASA, Aldrin helped sell the Volkswagen (VW) Beetle, comparing its computer diagnostics system to the computer he used to fly to the moon.
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/apollo/magnificent-communication-apollo-11-moonwalker-buzz-aldrin-tests-verizon-satellite-service-in-new-ad
https://www.verizon.com/about/news/verizon-conquers-remaining-dead-zones-test-man-buzz-aldrin
SpaceX Starlink Launches
On Saturday, February 1 at 3:02 p.m. PT, Falcon 9 launched 22 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
This was the 17th flight for the first stage booster supporting this mission, which previously launched SDA-0A, SARah-2, Transporter-11, and now 14 Starlink missions.
https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=sl-11-4
SpaceX is targeting Monday, February 3 for a Falcon 9 launch of 21 Starlink satellites, including 13 with Direct to Cell capabilities, to low-Earth orbit from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
Liftoff is targeted for 3:54 a.m. ET, with backup opportunities available until 7:54 a.m. ET. If needed, additional launch opportunities are also available Tuesday, February 4 starting at 3:26 a.m. ET.
A live webcast of this mission will begin about five minutes prior to liftoff, which you can watch here and on X @SpaceX. You can also watch the webcast on the new X TV app.
This is the 21st flight for the first stage booster supporting this mission, which previously launched OneWeb 1, SES 18+19, Eutelsat HOTBIRD-F1, CRS-24, and 16 Starlink missions.
Following stage separation, the first stage will land on the Just Read the Instructions droneship, which will be stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.
https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=sl-12-3
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14351625/Elon-Musk-backs-mission-Mars-square-structure-Joe-Rogan.html
https://x.com/joerogan/status/1885497490708840602
https://viewer.mars.asu.edu/planetview/inst/moc/E1000462#T=2&P=E1000462
Elon Musk backs mission to Mars to investigate remarkable 'square structure' seen on the red planet as Joe Rogan brands bizarre feature 'wild'
Updated: 10:08 EST, 2 February 2025
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has backed a mission to Mars to investigate the remarkable 'square structure' that was captured on NASA's Mars Orbiter Camera.
The image, which has gone viral after being shared on Reddit, appears to show a possible archaeological site on the Red Planet.
Joe Rogan, who hosts the number 1 podcast in the world, shared photos of the structure on X, branding it as 'f***ing wild'.
Musk, responding to his longtime friend's tweet, said: 'We should send astronauts to Mars to investigate!'
Experts are yet to provide any official scientific explanation as to what the structure may be, but that hasn't stopped conspiracy theorists from arguing it is evidence of alien civilisation on Mars.
The square structure is estimated to measure 235metres on each side, approximately 770ft, according to AI Calculations, CAclubindia reported.
Conspiracy theorists have likened the structure to the Great Pyramid in Egypt, which measures at roughly 230metres on each side.
The AI calculations also estimate the structure on Mars may share the same 51.5-degree slope as the Great Pyramid.
The now-viral photograph originates from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor's Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC).
The image can be viewed Arizona State University's Mars Image Explorer.
An enhanced version of the photo - which was clean-up, not photoshopped - has also been shared online, revealing the formation with more defined lines.
Little is known about the structure at this time, however it is not the only square-like shape to appear in nature.
Thousands of naturally-produced square and rectangle-like shapes can be found in the Tasman Peninsula of Tasmania, Australia.
The Tessellated Pavements of Eaglehawk Neck are located about an hour away from Hobart, the capital of Tasmania, along the water.
The tile-like rocks are mostly made of siltstone and were formed around 300 million years ago after being disrupted by the Earth's movement, the BBC reported.
The movement produced cracks - known as joints - in the rocks.
As the Tasman Sea evaporated, salt crystals combined with the joints and waves from the water provided consistent erosion, exaggerating the process to produce the rocks.
Although the structure on Mars could have formed naturally, space-loving conspiracy theorists are citing it as proof to support their unsubstantiated claims about an ancient Martian civilisation.
Some conspiracy theorists suggest that could be an imaging artefact, while others argue that it is remains of an alien civilisation.
However, there is a decades-long history of misinterpretation of images captured on Mars.
For example, NASA's Viking 1 orbiter took a photograph in July 1976 that was dubbed the 'Face on Mars' because one rock captured in the picture resembled a human head.
NASA scientists quickly determined the human-like face was created by 'tricks of light and shadows', according to Space.com, but that did not stop the public from seizing onto the idea that a Martian civilization once existed.
Another human-face like rock was spotted lying on the Martian landscape last year.
The Perseverance rover photographed the bizarre face on September 27 while making its way through Jezero Crater, a 28-mile-wide region on Mars that may have once been flooded with water.
Perseverance — a car-sized, remote-controlled mobile lab — has been exploring the dusty basin of this asteroid impact site since February 2021.
Jezero was once flowing with water about 3.7 billion years ago, with evidence of a 'paleolake' and a long, lost river delta within the rim of this 28-mile-diameter crater.
The mission is for the rover to search for ancient rocks that could provide insights into Mars' early history.
Perseverance snapped this picture using its Right Mastcam-Z camera, which is a pair of cameras located high on the rover's mast, according to NASA.
1/2
Mars neighbors the main asteroid belt and its atmosphere is only one percent as thick as Earth's. That means it's often bombarded by space rocks, which infiltrate Mars' atmosphere unscathed and land largely in tact.
But the majority of rocks found on the Martian surface were formed by volcanic activity, wind erosion and ancient water flows that have dried up.
Meanwhile, Musk is continuing his quest to reach Mars, despite the fact that Space X's seventh Starship test flight was 'destroyed' last month less than ten minutes after its launch.
The uncrewed test flight was Musk's latest attempt to make life on mars a reality after his sixth test flight exploded less than ten minutes into its flight.
The new-generation ship launched from Texas on January 16 and successfully flew for around eight minutes, with the teams' second breathtaking booster catch, before contact was lost. Officials confirmed that the spacecraft was destroyed.
Debris, with unclear relations to the spacecraft, was captured on camera flying across the Caribbean just minutes after the flight test.
'Every Starship launch is one more step closer towards Mars,' Musk said before liftoff, as he hopes his ships will be the first to launch humanity into life on Mars.
The new Starship featured 'significant upgrades', SpaceX said. It was rolled out taller - now standing at 403 feet - and with about 300 more tons of propellant than the last test flight ship, with added upgrades for 'reliability and performance.'
SpaceX announced there would be 'hardware upgrades to the launch and catch tower to increase reliability for booster catch,' including enhancements to sensor protections on the chopsticks damaged during the last launch.
As well as a redesigned upper-stage propulsion system that can carry 25 percent more propellant, along with slimmer, repositioned forward flaps to reduce exposure to heat during reentry.
The company also added ten dummy satellites, the same size as SpaceX's Starlink internet satellites, for release in space. They were due to follow the same flight path as the spacecraft, ending up destroyed upon entry.
SpaceX's last successful launch happened in October on its fifth flight test. The sixth, which was witnessed by President-elect Donald Trump in November, made a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.
The test flight launched just after 5.30 EST in Texas across the Gulf of Mexico.
Just around 3 minutes into the flight, the Super Heavy booster successfully detached and performed a flip maneuver, making its way back to the launchpad.
Around six and a half minutes into the flight, Super Heavy returned and was successfully caught by the launch tower for SpaceX's second time.
While Stage 1 was successful, contact with the ship was reported to be lost just after the eight-and-a-half-minute mark. Just after the twenty-minute mark, it was confirmed that the ship was lost.
Hours earlier, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin - launched their newest rocket, New Glenn, in Florida. The rocket reached orbit on its first flight, successfully placing an experimental satellite thousands of miles above Earth.
However, the booster was destroyed and missed its targeted landing on a floating platform in the Atlantic.
Musk last year doubled down on his vow to 'colonise Mars' in the wake of the first US lunar touchdown in more than a half century and the first by a privately owned spacecraft.
The achievement prompted Tesla's X account to bring a quote from Musk that was first referenced in Walter Isaacson's 2023 biography of the South African.
'I'm going to colonise Mars. My mission in life is to make mankind multiplanetary civilisation,' the tweet read. Musk's retweeted the message from his personal account with the accompanying words: 'Only if civilisation lasts long enough.'
The latter is a likely reference Musk's long held belief that the world is under populating, saying in 2023 that declining birth rates were 'the biggest danger civilisation faces so far.'
In 2017, Musk said that the number of people on Earth is 'accelerating towards collapse but few seem to notice or care.'
Then in 2021 he warned that civilisation is 'going to crumble' if people don't have more children.
According Isaacson, Musk first made his comments about colonising Mars while reading a 'tattered manual for a Russian rocket engine' in a cabana in Las Vegas at a PayPal event.
Former PayPal exec Mark Woolway happened to ask Musk what he planned to do next.
'I'm going to colonize Mars. My mission in life is to make mankind a multiplanetary civilization,' he said. 'Dude, you're bananas,' Woolway responded.
2/2