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An instrument destined for Jupiter orbit undergoes eight days of cryogenic radio-frequency testing using a new test facility at ESA’s ESTEC technical centre in the Netherlands. The Submillimetre Wave Instrument of ESA’s Juice mission will survey the churning atmosphere of Jupiter and the scanty atmospheres of its Galilean moons.

Testing took place in ESA’s custom-built Low-temperature Near-field Terahertz chamber, or Lorentz. The first chamber of its kind, the 2.8-m diameter Lorentz chamber can perform high-frequency radio-frequency testing in realistic space conditions, combining space-quality vacuum with ultra-low temperatures.

Los Alamos NM (SPX) Jun 15, 2021
For the first time, the boundary of the heliosphere has been mapped, giving scientists a better understanding of how solar and interstellar winds interact. "Physics models have theorized this boundary for years," said Dan Reisenfeld, a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and lead author on the paper, which was published in the Astrophysical Journal today. "But this is the first tim

London, UK (SPX) Jun 15, 2021
The spin of the Milky Way's galactic bar, which is made up of billions of clustered stars, has slowed by about a quarter since its formation, according to a new study by researchers at University College London (UCL) and the University of Oxford. For 30 years, astrophysicists have predicted such a slowdown, but this is the first time it has been measured. The researchers say it gives

Beijing (XNA) Jun 15, 2021
China's Mars rover Zhurong will continue moving southward to explore the Red Planet, focusing on key scientific issues, such as potential locations of water and ice, as well as volcanic activities, according to a project leader. Liu Jianjun, chief designer of the Tianwen 1 mission's scientific system, said on Saturday that mission planners decided the rover would move south out of scientif

Raleigh NC (SPX) Jun 15, 2021
NASA is finally headed back to Venus. On June 2, 2021, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced that the agency had selected two winners of its latest Discovery class spacecraft mission competition, and both are headed to the second planet from the Sun. I'm a planetary scientist and a self-confessed Venus evangelist, and here's why I'm so excited that humanity is going back to Venus.

London, UK (SPX) Jun 15, 2021
An international team of researchers led by The Open University (OU) has provided the first sample-based evidence, which they argue reflects the age of the Serenitatis Basin - one of the oldest craters on the Moon. The formation and ages of the lunar basins and craters, created during large collisional impact events during the first ~500 million years of the Solar System history, have fasc

Dresden, Germany (SPX) Jun 15, 2021
Not only the very concise 11-year cycle, but also all other periodic solar activity fluctuations can be clocked by planetary attractive forces. This is the conclusion drawn by Dr. Frank Stefani and his colleagues from the Institute of Fluid Dynamics at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) and from the Institute of Continuous Media Mechanics in Perm, Russia. With new model calcul

Washington DC (UPI) Jun 14, 2021
NASA and the space industry will conduct several missions over the next year to test more efficient, environmentally friendly spacecraft, including a non-toxic propellant and solar power. The rapid expansion of private spaceflight, along with planned missions to the moon and Mars, has prompted a need for easier handling of spacecraft and their fuel, Jeff Sheehy, NASA's chief engineer fo

Kennedy Space Center FL (SPX) Jun 15, 2021
NASA and SpaceX have adjusted target launch and return dates for upcoming crew missions to and from the International Space Station based on visiting vehicle traffic. NASA's SpaceX Crew-3 mission now is targeting launch no earlier than Sunday, Oct. 31, with NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn and Kayla Barron and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Matthias Maurer. Crew-3 will laun

Potsdam, Germany (SPX) Jun 15, 2021
By mapping the motion of galaxies in huge filaments that connect the cosmic web, astronomers at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP), in collaboration with scientists in China and Estonia, have found that these long tendrils of galaxies spin on the scale of hundreds of millions of light years. A rotation on such enormous scales has never been seen before. The results published in