Yesterday, an unmanned experimental spacecraft from the European Space Agency took off from French Guiana and, 100 minutes later, splashed down into the Pacific Ocean just west of the Galapagos Islands. The spacecraft, called the Intermediate Experimental Vehicle, or IXV, didn’t look like your standard cone, though. It looked more—well, cinematic, for lack of a better word, kind of like a miniature space shuttle minus the wings and tail. And that odd shape might presage the future of space travel.
The supermassive black hole is 40 million times as massive as the sun and powers a quasar that existed 700 million years after the Big Bang.
The asteroid zoomed by Earth at a perfectly safe distance of around 1.8 million miles (2.9 kilometers).
Images show surprise changes to the spacecraft as it interacted with the atmosphere.
