Elon Musk’s SpaceX succeeded in delivering supplies to the International Space Station (ISS), but failed to land its rocket on a platform designed to retrieve it and allow it to be re-used. SpaceX attempted to land the first stage on an autonomous spaceport drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean after stage separation. While the rocket made it to the drone ship, it landed hard, the company reports.
There were no fireworks on the sun to welcome in the new year, and only a few C-class flares during the last day of 2014. Instead, the sun starts 2015 with an enormous coronal hole near the south pole. Coronal holes are regions of the corona where the magnetic field reaches out into space rather than looping back down onto the surface. Particles moving along those magnetic fields can leave the sun rather than being trapped near the surface. Those trapped particles can heat up and glow. In the parts of the corona where the particles leave the sun, the glow is much dimmer and the coronal hole looks dark.