Week in images: 24 - 28 January 2022

Discover our week through the lens

Berlin, Germany (SPX) Jan 27, 2022
These images, created using data acquired by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA's Mars Express orbiter, show the Jovis Tholus volcano and various other landscape features, such as tectonic faults, impact craters and solidified lava flows, in the Tharsis region of Mars. The Tharsis uplift, which is several kilometres high, was one of the most active volcanic regions near the Ma

Beijing, China (SPX) Jan 27, 2022
It is generally believed that the Universe is isotropic and homogeneous on large distance scales, i.e., there is no preferred position or direction in the Universe. This hypothesis forms the basis of the standard Big Bang cosmology and is called the cosmological principle (CP). It implies that the Universe is expanding and, to a good approximation, has exactly the same properties at all spatial

Osaka, Japan (SPX) Jan 27, 2022
Magnetic fields are detected throughout the universe and widely participate in astrophysical dynamics. Various fundamental phenomena, including coronal mass ejections, solar flares, gamma-ray bursts and pulsar winds, are dominated by variations in magnetic fields. Although the mechanisms involved in the origin of magnetic fields in space are still uncertain, one of the widely accepted plau

Perth, Australia (SPX) Jan 27, 2022
A team mapping radio waves in the Universe has discovered something unusual that releases a giant burst of energy three times an hour, and it's unlike anything astronomers have seen before. The team who discovered it think it could be a neutron star or a white dwarf-collapsed cores of stars-with an ultra-powerful magnetic field. Spinning around in space, the strange object sends out

Pasadena CA (JPL) Jan 27, 2022
Mars once rippled with rivers and ponds billions of years ago, providing a potential habitat for microbial life. As the planet's atmosphere thinned over time, that water evaporated, leaving the frozen desert world that NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) studies today. It's commonly believed that Mars' water evaporated about 3 billion years ago. But two scientists studying data that M

Beijing (XNA) Jan 26, 2022
China has released SpaceOS III, a new-generation operating system for spacecraft. Developed by the Beijing Institute of Control Engineering under China Academy of Space Technology, the operating system has independent intellectual property rights. Earlier versions of SpaceOS have been used in more than 300 spacecraft. According to SpaceOS developers, the system boasts outstanding rel

Alexandria VA (SPX) Jan 27, 2022
SCOUT Inc. has announced its latest Autonomy Software offerings: computer vision and guidance software to make navigation safer and less complex for space operators. These offerings include software-hardware integration providing: next-generation AI/ML-based autonomy, hybrid data fusion from various sensors, and closed-loop optical navigation control algorithms. "Our first SCOUT-Vision sys

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over northwest Lesotho – a small, land-locked country surrounded entirely by South Africa.

The lower stage of ESA’s next-generation Ariane 6 launch vehicle has been installed on the assembly line at Europe’s Spaceport behind the upper stage. It is now time to join the two horizontally to create the central core of Ariane 6 in readiness for the first combined tests on the launch pad.