Astronauts squeeze in last spacewalk before SpaceX departure

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Astronauts squeezed in one last spacewalk Tuesday before turning their attention to the all-important end to SpaceX’s first crew flight.NASA’s Bob Behnken and Chris Cassidy floated out of the International Space Station on their fourth and final spacewalk in under a month.

NASA set to release closest ever images of the sun on Thursday morning

WASHINGTON -- NASA and the European Space Agency are set to release the first close-up images of the sun from their joint Solar Orbiter mission.“In mid-June, Solar Orbiter made its first close pass of the Sun following its Feb. 9 launch, turning on all 10 of its instruments together for the first time,” said NASA, in a statement on its website. “This flyby captured the closest images ever taken of the sun.”NASA will reveal the images, along with the first data from the Solar Orbiter mission, during a briefing at 7 a.m. CDT on Thursday.“During the briefing, mission experts will discuss what these closeup images reveal about our star, including what we can learn from Solar Orbiter’s new measurements of particles and magnetic fields flowing from the sun,” NASA added in its statement.In another project, NASA recently released a stunning 61-minute time-lapse video that shows a decade in the life of the sun.The video was created from images taken by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.Earth’s star continues to reveal its secrets.

Firm to offer balloon rides from Alaska to the edge of space

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A company wants to use an advanced balloon to fly customers from Earth's surface in Alaska to the highest reaches of the planet's atmosphere.Florida-based startup firm Space Perspective plans to use the Pacific Spaceport Complex in Kodiak to serve as one of the launch sites for the vehicle, called the Spaceship Neptune, The Anchorage Daily News reported.

NASA releases mesmerizing 10-year timelapse footage of sun

HOUSTON -- NASA released timelapse footage of the sun over the past 10 years to celebrate its Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), which has monitored the sun for over a decade, according to their YouTube account.“From its orbit in space around Earth, SDO has gathered 425 million high-resolution images of the sun, amassing 20 million gigabytes of data over the past 10 years,” NASA said.The information gathered from the constant observation of the sun has enabled many new discoveries and how this life-giving star works, according to NASA.“The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) instrument alone captures images every 12 seconds at 10 different wavelengths of light,” NASA continued. “This 10-year time lapse showcases photos taken at a wavelength of 17.1 nanometers, which is an extreme ultraviolet wavelength that shows the sun’s outermost atmospheric layer — the corona.