Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft, launched last Saturday, November 2, has just reached the International Space Station and was captured by the Canadarm2 robotic arm. Astronaut Jessica Meir, assisted by her colleague Christina Koch, will soon begin the slow maneuver to move the Cygnus until it docks with the Station’s Unity module after about two hours.
A little while ago Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft blasted off atop an Antares rocket from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS), part of NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) on Wallops Island. After about nine minutes it successfully separated from the rocket’s last stage went en route to its destination. This is its 12th official mission, called NG-12 or CRS NG-12, to transport supplies to the International Space Station for NASA.
An article published in the journal “Science” reports the discovery of what could be the lowest-mass known black hole, perhaps even the first of a new class of black holes. A team of researchers led by Professor Todd Thompson of Ohio State University used data from APOGEE (Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment) to discover a binary system that includes an invisible object that could be a black hole. If instead it were a neutron star it would be by far the most massive known, far beyond the theoretical highest limit before the collapse of such an object into a black hole.
