Weekly- Intuitive Machines lands sideways on the moon and more
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Intuitive Machines lands sideways on the moon again
Last week, private company Intuitive Machines’ second lunar lander, named IM-2 or Athena, successfully landed on the moon. There’s a catch though. The lander accidentally landed on its side, just like the previous IM-1 (the first private lander on the moon). This means that there will be issues with power generation and other instruments. This mission, too, like Blue Ghost, was equipped with several NASA instruments to “scour the moon’s surface before the Artemis program.”
SpaceX Starship explodes midair
SpaceX conducted its eighth test launch of its Starship mega rocket last week. Though SpaceX managed to recreate its legendary booster catch using the launch tower’s chopstick arms, the main Starship spacecraft exploded about nine minutes after launch after SpaceX lost contact. The spacecraft was intended to launch a few dummy satellites into orbit and then splash down in the Indian Ocean.
Hubble finds one of the largest blackholes ever
Recently, NASA’s Hubble space telescope discovered a supermassive blackhole in a system of 2 galaxies about 5.6 billion lightyears away.
The pair of galaxies known as the ‘Cosmic Horseshoe’ are lined up, one behind the other. The massive gravity of the front galaxy bends the light from the one behind it, creating a glowing circle called an Einstein ring. Its mass alone can’t explain this, suggesting a hidden black hole at its center, though it hasn’t been directly imaged.
This new blackhole is believed to have a mass 36 billion times that of our sun. It is one of the largest black holes ever discovered.
