Week in images: 20-24 January 2025

Discover our week through the lens

Video: 00:01:20

Listen to the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo spacecraft as it flew past Mercury on 8 January 2025. This sixth and final flyby used the little planet's gravity to steer the spacecraft on course for entering orbit around Mercury in 2026. 

What you can hear in the sonification soundtrack of this video are real spacecraft vibrations measured by the Italian Spring Accelerometer (ISA) instrument. The accelerometer data have been shifted in frequency to make them audible to human ears – one hour of measurements have been sped up to one minute of sound.  

BepiColombo is always shaking ever so

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Jan 21, 2025
Bright Ascension Ltd., a leading provider of space software technology, has announced the successful deployment of its software aboard the Czech Republic's largest satellite, TROLL. The satellite was launched on January 14, 2025, as part of the SpaceX Transporter 12 mission. This achievement underscores both the Czech Republic's growing prominence in space exploration and Bright Ascension's expe

Paris, France (SPX) Jan 22, 2025
Gilat Satellite Networks Ltd. (NASDAQ, TASE: GILT), a global leader in satellite networking technology and solutions, has announced that its US-based subsidiary, Gilat DataPath, has secured contracts exceeding $5 million. These agreements, awarded by the US Department of Defense (DoD) and other international Defense Forces, involve providing DKET terminals and Field Service Representative (FSR)

London, UK (SPX) Jan 22, 2025
Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) has officially opened its advanced Research and Development Imaging Cleanroom at its Guildford headquarters. This new facility is designed to strengthen the company's expertise in optical imaging-a key technology for its Earth observation satellite missions. The cleanroom, now fully operational, houses SSTL's Optical Payloads Team and was developed wi

Greenbelt MD (SPX) Jan 22, 2025
Two NASA rocket missions are taking to the Alaskan skies in hopes of discovering why some auroras flicker, others pulsate, and still others are riddled with holes. Understanding these peculiar features is part of NASA's goal to understand the space environment around our planet, which can affect both spacecraft and astronauts. The launch window for the missions - which will fly out of the Poker

Paris, France (SPX) Jan 22, 2025
Artificially intelligent systems are increasingly prevalent in our daily lives, from automated vehicles to delivery robots and virtual assistants. As research shifts towards developing systems with artificial awareness, critical ethical questions arise: What responsibilities come with these advancements? How can benefits and challenges be balanced among developers, policymakers, and end-users? A

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Jan 22, 2025
NASA has launched the Sustainable Business Model Challenge to encourage entrepreneurs, startups, and researchers to use the agency's Earth system science data in developing innovative commercial solutions to address climate challenges. This initiative aims to connect vast NASA climate data resources with actionable business models to support climate resilience and informed decision-making.

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Jan 22, 2025
A research team led by Chunhui Xu from Emory University has demonstrated that heart muscle cells can survive and grow in the microgravity environment of space. Published in Biomaterials, the findings suggest new avenues for creating more resilient heart cells that could enhance cell therapy-a technique that involves transplanting millions of heart cells to repair damaged cardiac tissue. "T

Berkeley CA (SPX) Jan 22, 2025
Astronomer Calvin Leung was excited last summer to crunch data from a newly commissioned radio telescope to precisely pinpoint the origin of repeated bursts of intense radio waves - so-called fast radio bursts (FRBs) - emanating from somewhere in the northern constellation Ursa Minor. Leung, a Miller Postdoctoral Fellowship recipient at the University of California, Berkeley, hopes eventua