Washington (AFP) May 6, 2021
The US military has no plans to shoot down an out -of-control Chinese rocket now hurtling towards Earth, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Thursday. "We have the capability to do a lot of things, but we don't have a plan to shoot it down as we speak," Austin told journalists. Pentagon experts expect the body of the Long March 5B rocket, which fell out of orbit after separating from Bei

Greenbelt MD (SPX) May 07, 2021
NASA is one step closer to robotically refueling a satellite and demonstrating in-space assembly and manufacturing thanks to the completion of an important milestone. In April 2021, NASA and Maxar Technologies successfully completed the On-orbit Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing 1 (OSAM-1) mission spacecraft accommodation Critical Design Review (CDR). This milestone demonstrates that

Iowa City IA (SPX) May 07, 2021
For millennia, humans in the high latitudes have been enthralled by auroras - the northern and southern lights. Yet even after all that time, it appears the ethereal, dancing ribbons of light above Earth still hold some secrets. In a new study, physicists led by the University of Iowa report a new feature to Earth's atmospheric light show. Examining video taken nearly two decades ago, the

London, UK (SPX) May 07, 2021
A curiously yellow pre-supernova star has caused astrophysicists to re-evaluate what's possible at the deaths of our Universe's most massive stars. The team describe the peculiar star and its resulting supernova in a new study published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. At the end of their lives, cool, yellow stars are typically shrouded in hydrogen, which conceals the

Baltimore MD (SPX) May 07, 2021
New Johns Hopkins University simulations offer an intriguing look into Saturn's interior, suggesting that a thick layer of helium rain influences the planet's magnetic field. The models, published this week in AGU Advances, also indicate that Saturn's interior may feature higher temperatures at the equatorial region, with lower temperatures at the high latitudes at the top of the helium ra

Tokyo, Japan (SPX) May 07, 2021
New observations and simulations show that jets of high-energy particles emitted from the central massive black hole in the brightest galaxy in galaxy clusters can be used to map the structure of invisible inter-cluster magnetic fields. These findings provide astronomers with a new tool for investigating previously unexplored aspects of clusters of galaxies. As clusters of galaxies grow

Washington DC (SPX) May 07, 2021
The early-stage NASA concept could see robots hang wire mesh in a crater on the Moon's far side, creating a radio telescope to help probe the dawn of the universe. After years of development, the Lunar Crater Radio Telescope (LCRT) project has been awarded $500,000 to support additional work as it enters Phase II of NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program. While not yet a NASA mission

Paris (ESA) May 07, 2021
The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, Juice, has come 'home' to ESA's technical centre in the Netherlands to undergo an extreme environment test in Europe's largest thermal vacuum chamber to prepare for its journey to the outer Solar System. The spacecraft arrived at ESTEC, ESA's European Space Research and Technology Centre, from Airbus Friedrichshafen in Germany last week. It is now being unpa

Tucson AZ (SPX) May 07, 2021
Evidence of recent volcanic activity on Mars shows that eruptions could have taken place within the past 50,000 years, a paper by Planetary Science Institute Research Scientist David Horvath says. Most volcanism on the red planet occurred between 3 and 4 billion years ago, with smaller eruptions in isolated locales continuing perhaps as recently as 3 million years ago. But, until now, ther

Pasadena CA (JPL) May 07, 2021
Around the time of our first flight, we talked a lot about having our "Wright brothers moment" at Mars. And that makes a lot of sense, since those two mechanically-minded bicycle builders executed the first powered, controlled flight on Earth, and we were fortunate enough to do the same 117 years later - on another planet. But the comparisons shouldn't stop with a first flight. Ingenuity's