Los Angeles CA (SPX) Dec 04, 2024
NASA is advancing autonomous exploration to tackle one of its foremost goals - investigating the potential for life and habitability on ocean worlds. These missions focus on targets like Jupiter's Europa and Saturn's Enceladus, where subsurface liquid water could support life. Communication delays, extreme environments, and limited energy resources necessitate autonomous robotic systems for such

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Dec 04, 2024
Astronomers have identified a fourth planet in the Kepler-51 system, a discovery led by researchers at Penn State and Osaka University using data from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The system, previously known for its three ultra-low density "super-puff" planets, gained a new dimension as the unexpected orbital behavior of Kepler-51d revealed the presence of an additional planet.

Barcelona, Spain (SPX) Dec 04, 2024
Six years after NASA's Dawn mission completed its historic exploration of Ceres and Vesta, scientists continue to uncover remarkable insights about the largest bodies in the asteroid belt. A recent study led by the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (IAA-CSIC) reveals eleven new areas on Ceres that suggest the presence of a substantial internal reservoir of organic materials. This finding, ba

West Lafayette IN (SPX) Dec 04, 2024
NASA's Mars 2020 rover mission and Purdue University planetary scientist Briony Horgan are approaching a new phase in the search for details about the red planet's history and potential for previously hosting life. The mission's Perseverance rover is only weeks away from emerging from the 28-mile-wide Jezero Crater to explore new terrain. It's a point in the mission Horgan set her sights o

Greenbelt MD (SPX) Dec 04, 2024
Researchers have found that water on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko has a similar molecular signature to the water in Earth's oceans. Contradicting some recent results, this finding reopens the case that Jupiter-family comets like 67P could have helped deliver water to Earth. Water was essential for life to form and flourish on Earth and it remains central for Earth life today. While some

Sydney, Australia (SPX) Dec 04, 2024
China successfully launched a Long March 3B rocket on Tuesday afternoon from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan province, delivering an experimental satellite, Communication Technology Demonstrator 13, into its intended orbit, according to China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. The rocket lifted off at 1:56 pm, marking a significant achievement as the 100th launch of the

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Dec 04, 2024
Detonation, a supersonic combustion wave driven by shock waves and chemical energy, is a powerful means of converting chemical energy into thrust. This method has long been explored to enhance aerospace propulsion by improving thermodynamic cycle efficiency. Since the 1950s, various detonation engines, such as pulse detonation engines, oblique detonation engines, and rotating detonation engines,

Washington DC (SPX) Nov 28, 2024
Instruments aboard robotic landers have measured seismicity on the Moon and Mars, helping researchers learn about the inner workings of those celestial bodies. But the internal makeup of Venus is still not known, in part because high winds and blistering temperatures make it significantly more difficult to detect quakes on the second planet from the Sun. Three approaches to studying quakes

Paris, France (SPX) Nov 28, 2024
The SubOrbital Express-4 sounding rocket launched successfully from Sweden's Esrange Space Center near Kiruna at 06:00 CET yesterday, achieving a peak altitude of 256 kilometers. The mission provided approximately six minutes of microgravity for six onboard scientific experiments before returning to Earth. Challenging weather conditions overnight added suspense to the highly anticipated la

ESA’s Proba-3 will be the first mission to create an artificial total solar eclipse by flying a pair of satellites 150 metres apart. For six hours at a time, it will be able to see the Sun’s faint atmosphere, the corona, in the hard-to-observe region between the Sun’s edge and 1.4 million kilometres from its surface. This new technology combined with the satellite pair’s unique extended orbit around Earth will allow Proba-3 to do important science, revealing secrets of the Sun, space weather and Earth’s radiation belts.