Bill Nelson

The Long March 5B rocket prior to launch. Photo: Liu Huaiyu (AP)Reports of fallen space junk are pouring in from parts of Indonesia and Malaysia, suggesting debris from China’s out-of-control rocket reached land—including areas perilously close to homes.The 100-foot-long (30-meter) core stage fell back to Earth on Saturday, July 30,after having spent just six days in low Earth orbit. The precise time and location of the rocket’s return remained vague even during the hours and minutes leading up to the reentry, but the…

Launch of the Long March 5B rocket on July 24, 2022.Photo: Liu Huaiyu (AP)The core stage of a wayward Long March 5B rocket has returned from its short stint in low Earth orbit, disintegrating above the northern coast of Borneo. Dramatic videos of the disintegrating booster began to appear shortly after 1:00 p.m. ET, or 1:00 a.m. Central Indonesia Time (WITA). Some 45 minutes later, U.S. Space Command confirmed in a tweet that the rocket body reentered over the Indian ocean at 12:45 p.m. ET (12:45 a.m. WITA), followed by…

In a news conference Monday evening, NASA officials, President Biden, and Vice President Kamala Harris revealed the first full-color image from the Webb Space Telescope: a breathtaking shot of deep space stretching back over 13 billion years, the first in a set of images to be released this week of the telescope’s first cosmic targets.The image depicts SMACS 0723, a galactic cluster that magnifies deeper space behind it from Earth’s perspective, making it possible to see some of the earliest light of the…

China might be contemplating a "takeover" of the Moon as part of its military space program, Nasa's administrator Bill Nelson has told newspaper Bild.In an interview, Nelson claimed that the United States is now involved in a new race to space, with China this time. He emphasised that in 2035, Beijing might finish construction of its own Moon station and start experiments a year later.Nelson claimed that we must be very concerned about China landing on the Moon and saying that it now belongs to the Peoples' Republic and…

It’s now been six months since the Webb Space Telescope launched from French Guiana towards its observation point in space, one million miles from us. Now the telescope’s first color images are finally being taken; they will be released to the public on July 12.In a press conference today, NASA officials offered a couple tantalizing details about the images and gave some updates on the Webb’sperformance. The team announced that the upcoming release will include the deepest-ever image of the universe, and at least one…

The prospect of losses on the Federal Reserve’s holdings of securities is a real issue for U.S. taxpayers, a former top central bank staffer wrote in a research note Wednesday. Bill Nelson, who now works as chief economist for the Bank Policy Institute industry group, was responding to a report released by the New York Fed on Tuesday. In that report, the bank said the Fed likely suffered paper losses on bonds it owned this year and that those paper losses could be substantial over time depending on how…