Copernical Team
Starship Super Heavy breezes through wind tunnel testing at NASA Ames
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NASA and its industry partners continue to make progress toward Artemis III and beyond, the first crewed lunar landing missions under the agency's Artemis campaign.
SpaceX, the commercial Human Landing System (HLS) provider for Artemis III and Artemis IV, recently tested a 1.2% scale model of the Super Heavy rocket, or booster, in the transonic Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley.
9 phenomena NASA astronauts will encounter at Moon's south pole
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NASA's Artemis campaign will send the first woman and the first person of color to the moon's south polar region, marking humanity's first return to the lunar surface in more than 50 years.
Spacewalking is the new domain of the rich as billionaire attempts first private spacewalk
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First came space tourism. Now comes an even bigger thrill for the monied masses: spacewalking.
The stage is set for the first private spacewalk Thursday. Tech billionaire Jared Isaacman will pop out of the hatch of his orbiting SpaceX capsule, two days after blasting off from Florida on a chartered flight that lifted him and his crew higher than anyone since NASA's moonwalkers. He partnered with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to buy a series of rocket rides and help develop brand new spacesuits.
SpaceX is the first private company to attempt a spacewalk, until now the domain of just 12 countries. There's a reason why it's such a niche and elite group: Spacewalking is considered the most dangerous part of any flight after launch and reentry, and demands extensive training.
Hera CubeSats’ touchdown
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Hera CubeSats’ touchdown Rosetta's legacy: how were you inspired?
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From inspiring a love for the stars to making a life-changing career move, we want to know how ESA’s Rosetta mission has shaped your life.
Amid Boeing's Starliner troubles, WA space industry thrives
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It'd be reasonable to think Washington's space economy has a lot riding on Boeing's Starliner, the spacecraft that left two astronauts stranded on the International Space Station and headed back to Earth with an empty cabin Friday.
The astronauts were scheduled to return on Starliner in June after a week on the ISS, but thruster failures and helium leaks on the way there made NASA decide a trip back on the Boeing spacecraft was too risky. Boeing's troubles with Starliner date back years, including a flawed, unmanned test flight in 2019 that had to be repeated in 2022.
But, outside of some classified satellite jobs that pop up in South King County, Boeing's efforts in the Seattle area are largely centered on its commercial airplane business, according to industry experts. Instead, the biggest players in the Seattle area's space industry are Amazon, Blue Origin and SpaceX.
"The Seattle space ecosystem is small but mighty because we have companies here that cover the entire space supply chain," said Stan Shull, founder of space technology consulting firm Alliance Victory.
Shull said there are the space and tech giants like SpaceX and Amazon manufacturing thousands of satellites in their Starlink and Project Kuiper divisions, respectively, and Blue Origin with its rocket engines and spacecraft.
Below the surface - ExoMars Rosalind Franklin mission
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Watch the second episode of the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover mission – Europe’s ambitious exploration journey to search for past and present signs of life on Mars.
This episode starts with Rosalind searching for traces of life below the martian surface using a ground penetrating radar and a set of cameras.
The rover will dig, collect, and investigate the chemical composition of material collected by a drill. Rosalind Franklin will be the first rover to reach a depth of up to two metres deep below the surface, acquiring samples that have been protected from surface radiation and extreme temperatures.
Voyager 1 team accomplishes tricky thruster swap
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Engineers working on NASA's Voyager 1 probe have successfully mitigated an issue with the spacecraft's thrusters, which keep the distant explorer pointed at Earth so that it can receive commands, send engineering data, and provide the unique science data it is gathering.
After 47 years, a fuel tube inside the thrusters has become clogged with silicon dioxide, a byproduct that appears with age from a rubber diaphragm in the spacecraft's fuel tank. The clogging reduces how efficiently the thrusters can generate force. After weeks of careful planning, the team switched the spacecraft to a different set of thrusters.
The thrusters are fueled by liquid hydrazine, which is turned into gases and released in tens-of-milliseconds-long puffs to gently tilt the spacecraft's antenna toward Earth.
AI distinguishes dark matter signals from cosmic noise
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Dark matter, an unseen force believed to hold the universe together, constitutes approximately 85% of all matter and 27% of the universe's content. Although its gravitational effects on galaxies and cosmic structures are well-documented, the true nature of dark matter remains elusive.
A dominant theory posits that dark matter could be made up of particles that interact only through gravity Parker Solar Probe Lines Up for Final Venus Flyby
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NASA's Parker Solar Probe executed a short maneuver on Aug. 26 that kept the spacecraft on course for the mission's seventh and final planned Venus flyby on Nov. 6.
Operating on preprogrammed commands, Parker fired its small directional thrusters for about 17 seconds, changing its velocity by less than a mile per hour, and setting its trajectory some 386 miles (593 kilometers) closer to a