Copernical Team
Arctic Weather Satellite: advancing weather forecasting in a changing climate
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The effects of the climate crisis are felt more acutely in the Arctic than anywhere else on the planet. The weather in the Arctic is not only severe, but it changes extremely quickly. More frequent data are urgently needed to improve weather forecasts for this susceptible polar region.
Enter ESA’s Arctic Weather Satellite: a brand new prototype mission to show exactly how this can be achieved. The satellite will provide precise, short-term weather forecasts for the Arctic region. It is equipped with a 19-channel cross-track scanning microwave radiometer which will provide high-resolution humidity and temperature soundings of the
Faint auroras may be visible in Northern Hemisphere skies after weekend solar storms
Solar storms persisting from the weekend may produce faint colorful auroras across the Northern Hemisphere, with little disruption to power and communications, space forecasters said Monday.
The sun has shot out at least five strong solar flares since Saturday containing clouds of high-energy plasma that can interfere with power grids and scramble GPS signals, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But no major communication problems have been reported so far, said NOAA spokesperson Erica Grow Cei.
Unusually strong solar storms in May produced jaw-dropping aurora displays across the Northern Hemisphere.
SpaceX launches new round of Starlink satellites after Sunday scrub
SpaceX successfully launched a new round of 23 Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit on Monday morning after a previous launch opportunity was scrubbed on Sunday.
The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 6:38 a.m. EDT and SpaceX confirmed the satellite payload was deployed about an hour later.
"Rise and shine with Falcon 9," SpaceX wrote on social media.
The launch from the Ke EU warns Musk over 'harmful content' ahead of Trump interview
The EU's top digital official wrote to Elon Musk Monday to remind him of his legal duty to stop "harmful content" from spreading on X, hours before the tech billionaire interviews Donald Trump live on the platform.
"With great audience comes greater responsibility," the bloc's internal market commissioner Thierry Breton posted on X, along with the letter laying out Musk's obligations to comb SpaceX performs Canaveral launch Saturday, but scrubs 2nd launch from KSC
A Friday scrub of a launch attempt meant for a short while SpaceX was aiming to send up two of its rockets from the Space Coast within three hours of one another on Saturday morning.
The company stood down from the second launch attempt, though, and won't try to fly until at least Sunday. But the first one lifted off without a hitch.
A Falcon 9 carrying 21 of the company's Starlink internet satellites took off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station's Space Launch Complex 40 at 8:50 a.m.
SpaceX had scrubbed the Friday attempt for this mission because of booster recovery weather conditions downrange in the Atlantic.
The first-stage booster made its 21st trip to space having previously launched the Crew-3 and Crew-4 human spaceflight missions, among others. It made another recovery landing downrange in the Atlantic on the droneship Just Read the Instructions.
It's one of three boosters in SpaceX's fleet with at least 20 launches on the books. Another booster based at Cape Canaveral is the fleet leader, having already flown 22 times.
This marks the 56th launch among all providers on the Space Coast for 2024, with SpaceX responsible for all but four.
One SpaceX launch scrubbed, another still a go
SpaceX scrubbed its planned launch of a Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida Sunday just 46 seconds before it was scheduled to blast off, the company announced.
"Vehicle and payload are in good health and teams are resetting for a launch attempt on Monday, August 12," SpaceX said in a post on X.
The launch was scheduled to carry the next in a Mars and Jupiter get chummy in the night sky. The planets won't get this close again until 2033
Mars and Jupiter are cozying up in the night sky for their closest rendezvous this decade.
They'll be so close Wednesday, at least from our perspective, that just a sliver of moon could fit between them. In reality, our solar system's biggest planet and its dimmer, reddish neighbor will be more than 350 million miles (575 million kilometers) apart in their respective orbits.
The two planets will reach their minimum separation—one-third of 1 degree or about one-third the width of the moon—during daylight hours Wednesday in most of the Americas, Europe and Africa.
China Launches Initial Batch of Qianfan Network Satellites
China launched 18 communications satellites from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in Shanxi province on Tuesday afternoon. The satellites, weighing a total of 4.8 metric tons, were the first group of the Qianfan network, carried by a Long March 6A rocket that launched at 2:42 pm and successfully reached their designated orbit.
The Qianfan network, developed by the Shanghai-based company Sidus Space Introduces High-Speed Switch Card for Small Satellite Market
Sidus Space (NASDAQ: SIDU), a provider of precision space infrastructure solutions including satellite Data-as-a-Service, has announced the development of a high-speed switch card using the Frontgrade protocol-independent Crosspoint Switch. This multi-payload switch card, integrated into LizzieSat-2 (LS-2), is also available as a standalone product to support the small satellite supply chain. Detecting Supermassive Black Holes Using Smaller Black Holes
An international team of astrophysicists, including researchers from the University of Zurich, has developed a novel method to detect pairs of supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies. This new approach involves analyzing gravitational waves generated by nearby small stellar black hole binaries.
The origin of supermassive black holes at galactic centers remains a major mystery i 
