Ahead of World Wetlands Day, the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over Lake Titicaca – one of the largest lakes in South America.

The first complete upper stage of Europe’s new Ariane 6 launch vehicle has left ArianeGroup in Bremen and is now on its way to the DLR German Aerospace Center in Lampoldshausen, Germany. Hot firing tests performed in near-vacuum conditions, mimicking the environment in space, will provide data to prove its readiness for flight.

Washington DC (SPX) Jan 29, 2021
New Light Technologies Inc. (NLT) is partnering with Alba Orbital to provide agencies in and outside of the US with innovative solutions that utilize the first available low-cost, high-resolution satellite nighttime light data. Alba Orbital, headquartered in Scotland, has developed a unique PocketQube Satellite platform developed in partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA). The pla

Noordwijk, Netherlands (SPX) Jan 29, 2021
While most ESA personnel work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, essential activities continue to take place on site across Agency establishments while following social distancing protocols. In ESA's Materials and Electrical Components Laboratory -one of a suite of labs based at the ESTEC technical centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands -testing has continued on critical elements for se

Solna, Sweden (SPX) Jan 29, 2021
Swedish Space Corporation has announced the formation of SSC Space Thailand, a subsidiary targeted at the Asian-Pacific market, further expanding the company's presence in the region. The announcement marks further investment in the Asian-Pacific region, adding to SSC's already strong presence in Australia and Thailand, including ground station facilities in both countries. "SSC has

Plainsboro NJ (SPX) Jan 29, 2021
A new type of rocket thruster that could take humankind to Mars and beyond has been proposed by a physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. The device would apply magnetic fields to cause particles of plasma, electrically charged gas also known as the fourth state of matter, to shoot out the back of a rocket and, because of the conservation of moment

Dresden, Germany (SPX) Jan 29, 2021
The study of warm dense matter helps us understand what is going on inside giant planets, brown dwarfs, and neutron stars. However, this state of matter, which exhibits properties of both solids and plasmas, does not occur naturally on Earth. It can be produced artificially in the lab using large X-ray experiments, albeit only at a small scale and for short periods of time. Theoretical and

Dalian, China (SPX) Jan 29, 2021
Studying the creation and evolution of sulfur-containing compounds in outer space is essential for understanding interstellar chemistry. CS2 is believed to be the most important molecule in comet nuclei, interstellar dust, or ice cores. CS and S2 are the photodissociation fragments of CS2. Forty years ago, the emission spectra of only CS and S2 species, and not those of CS2 species, were o

Boston MA (SPX) Jan 29, 2021
MIT researchers have discovered four new exoplanets orbiting a sun-like star just over 200 light-years from Earth. Because of the diversity of these planets and brightness of their star, this system could be an ideal target for atmospheric characterization with NASA's upcoming James Webb Space Telescope. Tansu Daylan, a postdoc at the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, led

Heidelberg, Germany (SPX) Jan 29, 2021
Scientists have been finding ring-like structures indicating planet formation in the disks surrounding young Sun-like stars for several years. Astronomers led by Nicolas Kurtovic from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, have now detected similar signals in disks of young very low-mass stars that are considerably smaller and less massive than their counterparts. A