Copernical Team
Partial eclipse sweeps over northern hemisphere
A solar eclipse will be visible over the Earth's northern hemisphere on Thursday with parts of Canada and Siberia privy to the best view of the celestial event.
The eclipse will be partial, which means the people in its shadow won't be plunged into daytime darkness.
Instead, people with the maximum visibility—and necessary protective eyewear—will have a few minutes to glimpse the moon's silhouette ringed by the sun.
In northwest Canada, northern Russia, northwest Greenland and the North Pole, the sun will be 88 percent obscured by the moon.
The eclipse will be partly visible to observers in northwest North America, parts of Europe including France and the UK, and some of northern Asia.
If skies are clear, Londoners will be able to see the moon cover 20 percent of the sun at its maximum, at 11.13am local time (10:13 GMT).
"The farther southeast people are, the less the sun will be obscured," Florent Delefie of the Paris Observatory told AFP.
He stressed that people must never look directly at the sun—even with sunglasses or from behind a cloud—warning "retinal burns can be irreversible".
Lunar sample tells ancient story through international collaborative effort
Curtin University researchers have helped uncover the four billion year old story of a lunar sample brought from the moon to Earth, by the manned Apollo 17 mission more than 50 years ago.
The global research collaboration, involving scientists from the UK, Canada, Sweden and Australia, aimed to analyze the ancient rock sample through a modern lens to find out its age, which crater it came from and its geological trajectory.
That modern lens was provided, in part, by both Curtin's Geoscience Atom Probe Facility and Space Science and Technology Center (SSTC) where the research team was able to use the most advanced analytical equipment to accurately date the sample and perform sophisticated numerical impact simulations to determine the source crater.
Co-author Associate Professor Katarina Miljkovic from the SSTC in Curtin's School of Earth and Planetary Sciences said Curtin's involvement ensured the international team had access to world-class facilities in order to shed new light about Earth-moon origins.
"Through a truly international collaborative effort, we have connected a tiny lunar sample investigated on a microscopic scale with the moment when the moon's surface was smashed by a major impact event.
'Metasurface' technology could advance Earth science from orbit
Sunlight traveling through the atmosphere becomes polarized in different ways as it is scattered by water vapor, ice, aerosols created by living organisms, dust, and other particulates.
Measuring that polarization lets scientists extrapolate what is in the atmosphere, and the next generation of polarimeters for the job could benefit from a new technology developed by researchers at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Earth scientist Kerry Meyer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is working with Harvard partners to develop a science use for their "metasurface" technology. Using one flat optical component, the technology can analyze light along four polarization directions, allowing for a full characterization of light's polarized state: intensity, linear polarization (horizontal and vertical), and circular polarization.
NASA's Perseverance rover begins its first science campaign on Mars
On June 1, NASA's Perseverance Mars rover kicked off the science phase of its mission by leaving the "Octavia E. Butler" landing site. Until recently, the rover has been undergoing systems tests, or commissioning, and supporting the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter's month of flight tests.
During the first few weeks of this first science campaign, the mission team will drive to a low-lying scenic overlook from which the rover can survey some of the oldest geologic features in Jezero Crater, and they'll bring online the final capabilities of the rover's auto-navigation and sampling systems.
ESA flying payloads on wooden satellite
The world’s first wooden satellite is on the way, in the shape of the Finnish WISA Woodsat. ESA materials experts are contributing a suite of experimental sensors to the mission as well as helping with pre-flight testing.
Rocket on pad, China ready to send 1st crew to space station
Partial eclipse to sweep over northern hemisphere
A solar eclipse will be visible over the Earth's northern hemisphere on Thursday with parts of Canada and Siberia privy to the best view of the celestial event.
The eclipse will be partial, which means the people in its shadow won't be plunged into daytime darkness.
Instead, people with the maximum visibility—and necessary protective eyewear—will have a few minutes to glimpse the moon's silhouette ringed by the sun.
In northwest Canada, northern Russia, northwest Greenland and the North Pole, the sun will be 88 percent obscured by the moon.
The eclipse will be partly visible to observers in northwest North America, parts of Europe including France and the UK, and some of northern Asia.
If skies are clear, Londoners will be able to see the moon cover 20 percent of the sun at its maximum, at 11.13am local time (10:13 GMT).
"The farther southeast people are, the less the sun will be obscured," Florent Delefie of the Paris Observatory told AFP.
He stressed that people must never look directly at the sun—even with sunglasses or from behind a cloud—warning "retinal burns can be irreversible".
ESA selects revolutionary Venus mission EnVision
EnVision will be ESA’s next Venus orbiter, providing a holistic view of the planet from its inner core to upper atmosphere to determine how and why Venus and Earth evolved so differently.
Forest degradation primary driver of carbon loss in the Brazilian Amazon
Forest degradation has become the largest process driving carbon loss in the Brazilian Amazon, according to a recent study using ESA satellite data.
Four mission ideas to compete for Earth Explorer 11
As part of ESA’s commitment to develop and build satellite missions that push the boundaries of satellite technology and Earth science, four new mission ideas – Cairt, Nitrosat, Seastar and Wivern – have been selected to enter pre-feasibility study and compete to be the eleventh Earth Explorer mission.