Washington DC (UPI) Nov 1, 2021
The first set of satellites Amazon plans to send to space along with Verizon will be launched next fall, according to an experimental launch license filed Monday. The company plans to send up to 3,236 satellites as part of Project Kuiper, a satellite-internet service that will serve rural communities that lack terrestrial infrastructure. Two satellites - called KuiperSat-1 and K

San Antonio TX (SPX) Nov 02, 2021
NASA has selected the CubeSat Imaging X-Ray Solar Spectrometer (CubIXSS), led by Southwest Research Institute, to measure the elemental composition of hot, multimillion-degree plasmas in the Sun's corona - its outermost atmosphere. The nanosatellite is expected to be launched in 2024 as a secondary payload on another satellite launch. CubIXSS will determine the origins of hot plasma - highly ion

Boston MA (SPX) Nov 02, 2021
Planets and their stars form from the same reservoir of nebular material and their chemical compositions should therefore be correlated but the observed compositions of planets do not match completely those of their central stars. In our Solar system, for example, all the rocky planets and planetesimals contain near-solar proportions of refractory elements (elements like aluminum that cond

Washington (AFP) Nov 1, 2021
NASA and SpaceX on Monday delayed for the second time a mission to send four astronauts to the International Space Station due to a "minor medical issue" with a crew member. "The issue is not a medical emergency and not related to COVID-19," NASA said in a statement, without giving further details. The members of "Crew-3" - US astronauts Raja Chari, Kayla Barron and Tom Marshburn, as we

Géraldine Naja took up duty as Director of Commercialisation, Industry and Procurement (D/CIP), based at ESA Headquarters in Paris, on 1 November 2021.

Paris (AFP) Oct 27, 2021
A yellow streak representing high concentrations of methane, a dangerous greenhouse gas, is visible over southern Iraq on a map produced by Kayrros, a French firm that uses satellites to track leaks from fossil fuel facilities. The source of the immense leak discovered in 2019 was never officially confirmed - and it is only one of many. The satellite map shows blotches of colour splatte

Greenbelt MD (SPX) Oct 26, 2021
OpenET uses publicly available data to provide satellite-based information on evapotranspiration (the "ET" in OpenET). The primary satellite dataset for OpenET is from the Landsat program, a partnership between NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The most recent satellite in the program, Landsat 9, successfully launched on Sept. 27, 2021. Evapotranspiration is the process through w

Washington (AFP) Oct 27, 2021
The Pentagon's top general said Wednesday that China's recent test of an earth-circling hypersonic missile was akin to the Soviet Union's stunning launch of the world's first satellite, Sputnik, in 1957, which sparked the superpowers' space race. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed for the first time the Chinese test of a nuclear-capable missile that would be very d

Tucson AZ (SPX) Oct 29, 2021
Even galaxies don't like to be alone. While astronomers have known for a while that galaxies tend to congregate in groups and clusters, the process of going from formation to friend groups has remained an open question in cosmology. In a paper published in the Astronomy and Astrophysics Journal, an international team of astronomers reports the discovery of a group of objects that appear to