Copernical Team
Keeping it fluid
Image:
NASA astronaut Victor Glover installs the Fluid Dynamics in Space experiment, or Fluidics for short. Fluidics is the black cylinder pictured in the foreground of the European Columbus module of the International Space Station.
Developed by French space agency CNES and co-funded by Airbus, the Fluidics experiment is probing how fluids behave in weightlessness.
The experiment is made up of six small, transparent spheres housed in the black centrifuge seen here and is studying two phenomena.
The first is ‘sloshing’ or how liquids move inside closed spaces, which is hard to predict both with and without gravity. Think how
Arab spacecraft closes in on Mars on historic flight
A spacecraft from the United Arab Emirates was set to swing into orbit around Mars in the Arab world's first interplanetary mission Tuesday, the first of three robotic explorers arriving at the red planet over the next week and a half.
The orbiter, called Amal, Arabic for Hope, traveled 300 million miles in nearly seven months to get to Mars with the goal of mapping its atmosphere throughout each season.
A combination orbiter and lander from China is close behind, scheduled to reach the planet on Wednesday. It will circle Mars until the rover separates and attempts to land on the surface in May to look for signs of ancient life.
A rover from the U.S.
Millie Hughes-Fulford, trailblazing astronaut, dies at 75
Millie Hughes-Fulford, a trailblazing astronaut and scientist who became the first female payload specialist to fly in space for NASA, died following a yearslong battle with cancer, her family said. She was 75.
Hughes-Fulford was selected by NASA for its astronaut program in 1983 and five years later, in June 1991, spent nine days in orbit on the shuttle Columbia, conducting experiments on the effect of space travel on humans as part of the agency's first mission dedicated to biomedical studies, STS-40. She and her crew mates circled the Earth 146 times.
The research shaped the rest of her career and upon her return she established the Hughes-Fulford Laboratory at the San Francisco VA Healthcare System, which worked to understand the mechanisms that regulate cell growth in mammals.
"She came back to her world as a scientist and carried this experience of having flown in space and that became a unique filter through which she passed all of her scientific work," said Dr. Mike Barratt, a NASA flight surgeon assigned to Columbia, told the San Francisco Chronicle.
The laboratory was active right up through Hughes-Fulford's own seven-year battle with lymphoma. She died Feb. 2, at her San Francisco home. Her death was confirmed by her granddaughter, Kira Herzog of Mill Valle.
ESA’s Solar Orbiter ducks behind the Sun
What happens when the Solar System's No. 1 source of violent energy interferes with spacecraft communication?
Mikhail Kokorich resigns his CEO position in Momentus Space
Mikhail Kokorich has had to resign as his company develops dual-use technologies that can be used in civil and military spheres. The US government wants to keep them restricted from foreign access. As the details became known, Mikhail Kokorich the Russian founder and CEO of the American space startup Momentus Space resigned following publication of materials proving his illegitimate involvement in secret space technologies. OneSpace launches another private carrier rocket
The OS-X6B suborbital rocket, developed and made by OneSpace Technology, blasted off from a launch site in China's northwest at 17:05:05 on Friday.
With a length of 9.4 meters, the rocket Chongqing Liangjiang Star flew about 580 seconds and traveled 300 kilometers above the earth.
The test load was successfully separated and the entire flight was normal. This launch successfully comp Chang'e 4 lander, rover resume work on moon
The lander and rover of the Chang'e 4 probe have resumed work for their 27th lunar day on the far side of the moon.
The Yutu 2 rover activated at 4:26 am on Saturday and the lander activated just over 12 hours later, the China National Space Administration's Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center said.
Yutu 2 has traveled about 628.5 meters on the far side of the moon. It is now ABL Space Systems to power first UK Vertical Satellite Launch
Lockheed Martin has contracted ABL Space Systems, of El Segundo, California, a developer of low-cost launch vehicles and launch systems for the small satellite industry, to supply a rocket and associated launch services for the company's first UK vertical satellite launch.
The project known as UK Pathfinder Launch is planned to be the first ever vertical small satellite launch from UK soil Orbit Logic Tackles Autonomous Lunar Exploration with Robotic Swarms
Orbit Logic has been awarded a Phase I Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) contract sponsored by NASA to develop the Intelligent Navigation, Planning, and Awareness for Swarm Systems (IN-PASS) solution - an autonomous planning architecture supporting collaborative Lunar exploration with teams of humans cooperating with heterogeneous swarms of orbital (satellite) and surface (rover) assets. NASA's OSIRIS-REx to Fly a Farewell Tour of Bennu
On April 7, NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission will give asteroid Bennu one last glance before saying farewell. Before departing for Earth on May 10, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will perform a final flyby of Bennu - capturing its last images of sample collection site Nightingale to look for transformations on Bennu's surface after the Oct. 20, 2020, sample collection event.
The OSIRIS-REx mission tea 
