WASHINGTON — A European spacecraft is set to launch on a mission to help astronomers resolve an “embarrassing situation” in cosmology, although the launch itself is another kind of embarrassing situation for Europe. The European Space Agency’s Euclid spacecraft is ready to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Liftoff is scheduled for 11:11 a.m. Eastern July 1 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, with favorable weather expected. Euclid features a telescope 1.2 meters across equipped with a camera operating at visible wavelengths and a near-infrared spectrometer and photometer. The two-ton spacecraft will operate at the Earth-sun L-2 point also…
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NASA’s Parker Solar Probe (PSP) set off for a first-of-its-kind mission to travel through solar winds in space. The mission was launched with the goal of preventing charged particles from disrupting internet signals on Earth, according to a report on NASA’s website on June 20. Concerns of the implications of solar storms have plagued the minds of scientists and internet addicts alike, because of the potentially devastating impact that a months-long internet outage could cause. The PSP, which originally launched five years ago, launched on a trajectory that positioned it dangerously close to the sun’s surface, where solar wind is…