Washington (AFP) June 3, 2021
A SpaceX rocket took off Thursday for the International Space Station carrying supplies for scientific experiments, including some surprising passengers - squids and virtually indestructible microorganisms called tardigrades. The rocket, leased by NASA, launched from Florida at 1:29 pm local time (1729 GMT). The Dragon capsule detached from the Falcon 9 rocket about 12 minutes after take-of

Xichang, China (XNA) Jun 04, 2021
China sent a new meteorological satellite into planned orbit from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan Province on Thursday morning. The satellite, Fengyun-4B (FY-4B), was launched by a Long March-3B rocket at 12:17 a.m. (Beijing Time). It was the 372nd flight mission of the Long March rocket series, said the launch center. As the first of China's new-generation meteorologi

Luxembourg (SPX) Jun 04, 2021
Kleos Space S.A, a space-powered Radio Frequency Reconnaissance data-as-a- service (DaaS) company confirms the successful dispatch of its cluster of four Polar Vigilance Mission satellites (KSF1) from Delft in the Netherlands to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Under a rideshare contract with Spaceflight Inc., the satellites will lift-off aboard the Spaceflight SXRS-5 / SpaceX Transport

London, UK (SPX) Jun 04, 2021
SES Government Solutions (SES GS), a wholly-owned subsidiary of SES, and Isotropic Systems, a leading developer of transformational broadband terminal technologies, announce the successful completion of the first of two milestone next-generation antenna trials with the U.S. Military aimed at unleashing unprecedented information distribution to warfighters across the battlefield. The U.S. A

Austin TX (SPX) Jun 04, 2021
The surface of the sun churns with energy and frequently ejects masses of highly-magnetized plasma towards Earth. Sometimes these ejections are strong enough to crash through the magnetosphere - the natural magnetic shield that protects the Earth - damaging satellites or electrical grids. Such space weather events can be catastrophic. Astronomers have studied the sun's activity for centuri

Hamburg, Germany (SPX) Jun 04, 2021
Scientists have gained the best view yet of the brightest explosions in the universe: A specialised observatory in Namibia has recorded the most energetic radiation and longest gamma-ray afterglow of a so-called gamma-ray burst (GRB) to date. The observations with the High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) challenge the established idea of how gamma-rays are produced in these colossal stella

Leiden, Netherlands (SPX) Jun 04, 2021
A team of Leiden astronomers has managed to calculate the first 100 million years of the history of the Oort cloud in its entirety. Until now, only parts of the history had been studied separately. The cloud, with roughly 100 billion comet-like objects, forms an enormous shell at the edge of our solar system. The astronomers will soon publish their comprehensive simulation and its consequences i

San Antonio TX (SPX) Jun 04, 2021
On Monday, June 7, at 1:35 p.m. EDT (10:35 a.m. PDT), NASA's Juno spacecraft will come within 645 miles (1,038 kilometers) of the surface of Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede. The flyby will be the closest a spacecraft has come to the solar system's largest natural satellite since NASA's Galileo spacecraft made its penultimate close approach back on May 20, 2000. Along with striking imagery

Greenbelt MD (SPX) Jun 04, 2021
NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is 328,000 miles, or 528,000 kilometers, away from the asteroid Bennu, having fired its engines on May 10 to initiate a return trip to Earth. The spacecraft is on track to deliver an asteroid sample to Earth on September 24, 2023. Mission engineers had planned to do a small thruster firing last week to ensure the spacecraft stays on the correct path back to Ear

Washington (AFP) June 4, 2021
Space tourism company Virgin Galactic announced Thursday it will send researcher Kellie Gerardi, a well-known figure on TikTok, into space to conduct experiments for several minutes while weightless. The move presents an ideal opportunity for the company to flaunt its ambitions not only to send wealthy tourists on pleasure rides costing $200,000 or more, but also to advance science. The