Copernical Team
NASA, FAA Partnership Bolsters American Commercial Space Activities
NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) signed a new memorandum of understanding (MOU) reaffirming the agencies' longstanding relationship to foster robust American commercial space transportation capabilities, including commercial crew and cargo activities.
The NASA-FAA MOU follows the success of NASA's SpaceX Crew-1 launch - the first crewed mission from American soil to be li Orbit Logic Leverages Blockchain for Constellation Communication over Dynamic Networks
Orbit Logic has been awarded a Phase I Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) contract sponsored by NASA to develop Space Communication Reconstruction and Mapping with Blockchain Ledgering (SCRAMBL) - a secure and distributed communication system that will facilitate cooperation among heterogeneous satellite assets to satisfy constellation-level mission requirements. The solution is being dev BlackSky awarded IARPA contract to develop next generation artificial intelligence platform
BlackSky has won an award from the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) for a multi-phase, multi-year research contract. IARPA is responsible for leading research programs to overcome difficult challenges relevant to the U.S. intelligence community.
BlackSky has been selected to aid in the development of IARPA's Space-based Machine Automated Recognition Technique (SMART The world's first integrated quantum communication network
Chinese scientists have established the world's first integrated quantum communication network, combining over 700 optical fibers on the ground with two ground-to-satellite links to achieve quantum key distribution over a total distance of 4,600 kilometers for users across the country. The team, led by Jianwei Pan, Yuao Chen, Chengzhi Peng from the University of Science and Technology of China i NASA Selects 4 Concepts for Small Missions to Study Universe's Secrets
NASA has chosen four small-scale astrophysics missions for further concept development in a new program called Pioneers. Through small satellites and scientific balloons, these selections enable new platforms for exploring cosmic phenomena such as galaxy evolution, exoplanets, high-energy neutrinos, and neutron star mergers.
"The principal investigators of these concept studies bring innov Tiny NASA cameras to watch commercial lander form craters on moon
This little black camera looks like something out of a spy movie - the kind of device one might use to snap discrete photos of confidential documents.
It's about half the size of a computer mouse.
But the only spying this camera - four of them, actually - will do is for NASA researchers wondering what happens under a spacecraft as it lands on the Moon.
It's a tiny technology wi Chang'e 4 probe resumes work for 26th lunar day
The lander and rover of the Chang'e-4 probe have resumed work for the 26th lunar day on the far side of the moon.
The lander woke up at 3:13 a.m. on Friday (Beijing time), and the rover Yutu-2, or Jade Rabbit-2, woke up at 10:29 a.m. on Thursday, according to the Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center of the China National Space Administration.
Landing on the moon on Jan. 3, 2019 SpaceX Dragon capsule to make first of its kind science splashdown
By capsule, helicopter, boat, plane, and car, space station science experiments are about to make a first of a kind journey back to researchers on Earth.
On Jan. 11, the SpaceX cargo Dragon spacecraft carrying out the company's 21st commercial resupply services (CRS-21) mission for NASA undocks from the International Space Station, heading for splashdown off Pioneering a way to keep very small satellites in orbit
A cubesat, largely built by undergraduate students and scheduled to launch on Sunday, will explore the feasibility of a new propulsion method that could enable very small satellites to move around Earth's orbit without carrying fuel. This could pave the way for tiny satellites that stay in orbit for long periods and operate in swarms, monitoring storms and natural disasters, for example.
A cubesat is about the size of a loaf of bread, designed to hitch a ride into space with a major mission. Cubesats are low-cost ways to test out new technologies or enable students to get hands-on experience with space exploration. MiTEE is scheduled to fly from the Mojave Air and Space Port on Virgin Orbit's Launch Demo 2.
While Earth's atmosphere is much thicker on the ground, a scattering of air particles stretch all the way up to low Earth orbit—the territory of about 60 percent of Earth-orbiting satellites. Small satellites are more strongly affected by the drag of the upper atmosphere than large satellites, slowing their orbits and causing them to drop toward the Earth.
"These smaller spacecraft just don't last very long, maybe even days to weeks, or a few months, dependent upon how high they are," said Brian Gilchrist, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science, who supervised the team.
Evidence of water movement found in meteorites that only recently fell to Earth
A team of researchers affiliated with institutions in Australia, the U.S. and France has found evidence of relatively recent water movement in meteorites that only recently collided with the Earth. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes their study of carbonaceous chondrite (CC) meteorites that landed on the surface of the Earth within the past century and what they found.
A lot of scientists believe that the water present on Earth came from meteorites. This theory has been difficult to prove because the meteorites recovered to date do not contain water and because chemical reactions that might have involved comet-borne water occurred millions of years ago. In this new effort, the researchers took a look at the idea from another angle—they studied isotopes in meteorites that have landed on Earth over just the past century.
Prior research has suggested that most, if not all, CC meteorites were formed approximately 4.5 billion years ago as part of larger asteroids. To find out if recent arrivals might have evidence of a water history, the researchers looked at uranium and thorium distributions in samples—the former is water-soluble while the latter is not.
