...the who's who,
and the what's what 
of the space industry

Copernical Team

Copernical Team

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Washington DC (SPX) Apr 11, 2021
NASA will provide coverage of the upcoming prelaunch and launch activities for the agency's SpaceX Crew-2 mission with astronauts to the International Space Station. This is the second crew rotation flight of the SpaceX Crew Dragon and the first with two international partners. The flight follows certification by NASA for regular flights to the space station as part of the agency's Commercial Cr
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Washington (AFP) April 10, 2021
NASA has delayed by at least several days the first flight of its mini-helicopter on Mars after a possible tech issue emerged while testing its rotors, the US space agency said Saturday. Ingenuity's trip, which is to be the first-ever powered, controlled flight on another planet, was set for Sunday but is now on hold until at least April 14. A high-speed test of the four-pound (1.8 kilo
Friday, 09 April 2021 08:53

All aboard! Next stop space...

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This November 11, 2020, image obtained from Virgin Galactic shows pre-flight operations in Las Cruces, New Mexico
This November 11, 2020, image obtained from Virgin Galactic shows pre-flight operations in Las Cruces, New Mexico

Several hundred people have already booked their tickets and begun training for a spectacular voyage: a few minutes, or perhaps days, in the weightlessness of space.

The mainly wealthy first-time space travellers are getting ready to take part in one of several private missions which are preparing to launch.

The era of space tourism is on the horizon 60 years after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space.

Two companies, Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin, are building spacecraft capable of sending private clients on suborbital flights to the edge of space lasting several minutes.

Glenn King is the director of spaceflight training at the National Aerospace Training and Research Center, a based in Pennsylvania which has already trained nearly 400 future Virgin Galactic passengers for their trips.

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Washington (AFP) April 9, 2021
The helicopter that NASA has placed on Mars could make its first flight over the Red Planet within two days after a successful initial test of its rotors, the US space agency said Friday. The current plan for the first-ever attempt at powered, controlled flight on another planet is for the four-pound (1.8 kilogram) helicopter, dubbed the Ingenuity, to take off from Mars' Jezero Crater on Sun
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Washington DC (UPI) Apr 9, 2021
The 40th anniversary Monday of the first orbital flight of a space shuttle - Columbia - evokes the accomplishments of the program, but also a grim reminder of tragedies during its existence. The first shuttle orbital flight in April 1981 revolutionized space exploration because it proved a reusable, piloted space plane could succeed. But that legacy also offered perilous lesson
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Almaty, Kazakhstan (AFP) April 9, 2021
A three-man crew docked at the international Space Station Friday after a flight honouring the 60th anniversary of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becoming the first person in space. A Soyuz capsule carrying Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov and NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei docked at 1105 GMT, footage broadcasted by NASA TV showed. "There is contact!" Russia's space age
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Washington DC (UPI) Apr 9, 2021
President Joe Biden is seeking $24.7 billion for NASA in his 2022 budget released Friday, boosting funding for the agency's Artemis program as well as weather and climate efforts. The budget request represents a 6.3% increase over the $23.27 billion funding NASA received in the 2021 fiscal year. Steve Jurczyk, NASA's acting administrator, said the funding demonstrates Biden's "co
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Los Angeles CA (SPX) Apr 10, 2021
Every space event always seems to have a chuckle about sex in space. But the no jargon crowd at NASA somehow magnified the power of sex by denying it to the Voyagers crew. The opening scene with our little swimmers marching to pierce the goal only belies the race to save man. One dad for all kids being grown to launch with the premise that if they don't see the outside of the box they won'
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NASA’s Mars Helicopter to Make First Flight Attempt Sunday
NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter unlocked its blades, allowing them to spin freely, on April 7, 2021, the 47th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. This image was captured by the Mastcam-Z imager aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover on the following sol, April 8, 2021. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter is two days away from making humanity's first attempt at powered, controlled flight of an aircraft on another planet. If all proceeds as planned, the 4-pound (1.8-kg) rotorcraft is expected to take off from Mars' Jezero Crater Sunday, April 11, at 12:30 p.m. local Mars solar time (10:54 p.m.

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Jupiter
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Auroral displays continue to intrigue scientists, whether the bright lights shine over Earth or over another planet. The lights hold clues to the makeup of a planet's magnetic field and how that field operates.

New research about Jupiter proves that point—and adds to the intrigue.

Peter Delamere, a professor of space physics at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, is among an international team of 13 researchers who have made a key discovery related to the aurora of our solar system's largest planet.

The team's work was published April 9, 2021, in the journal Science Advances. The research paper, titled "How Jupiter's unusual magnetospheric topology structures its aurora," was written by Binzheng Zhang of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Hong Kong; Delamere is the primary co-author.

Research done with a newly developed global magnetohydrodynamic model of Jupiter's magnetosphere provides evidence in support of a previously controversial and criticized idea that Delamere and researcher Fran Bagenal of the University of Colorado at Boulder put forward in a 2010 paper—that Jupiter's polar cap is threaded in part with closed lines rather than entirely with open magnetic field lines, as is the case with most other planets in our solar system.

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