Image: The heavy snowfall that hit Spain a few days ago still lies heavy across much of the country as this Copernicus Sentinel-3 satellite image shows.

The month of December comes with holidays for many, but for the International Space Station and mission controls around the world, science never rests.

Washington DC (AFNS) Jan 12, 2021
Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe has welcomed the U.S. Space Force (USSF) as the 18th member of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). During an afternoon ceremony, Ratcliffe and Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. "Jay" Raymond announced the designation of the intelligence element of the U.S. Space Force as a member of the IC. "This accession reaffirms our commitme

Washington DC (UPI) Jan 6, 2021
For the first time, scientists have observed competition between magnetic orders from coupled sheets of atoms. The observations, described Wednesday in the journal Nature, promise new insights into the quantum qualities of two-dimensional materials. Ever since a pair of British researchers were awarded the Nobel Prize in 2010 for the discovery of graphene, material scientists, electrica

Moscow (AFP) Jan 12, 2021
Russia's cosmonaut training centre said Tuesday it has begun vaccinating employees against the coronavirus ahead of future space missions. The press service of the Yuri Gagarin Training Centre told AFP that around 40 of its nearly 1,500 employees had received the first dose of Russia's homemade coronavirus vaccine Sputnik V. Named after famous Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first pe

Paris, France (Sputnik) Jan 13, 2021
French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday pointed to the excessive competition in the European space industry and called for larger investments, noting that Paris would allocate 100 million euros ($121.5 million) for space projects in the next two years. "In terms of [economic] recovery, we have decided to invest 100 million euros in space, which will cover innovations related to carrier

Baltimore MD (SPX) Jan 13, 2021
How dark is the sky, and what does that tell us about the number of galaxies in the visible universe? Astronomers can estimate the total number of galaxies by counting everything visible in a Hubble deep field and then multiplying them by the total area of the sky. But other galaxies are too faint and distant to directly detect. Yet while we can't count them, their light suffuses space with a fe

Berlin, Germany (SPX) Jan 13, 2021
This month marks the 220th anniversary of the discovery of the first asteroid. During the night of 1-2 January 1801, Giuseppe Piazzi, the director of Palermo Astronomical Observatory, noticed a 'star' on the shoulder of the bull-shaped constellation, Taurus. But the position of the star was changing each night. Piazzi had discovered Ceres, the largest body in the vast space between the planets M

Washington DC (SPX) Jan 13, 2021
NASA and the Government of Japan have finalized an agreement for the lunar Gateway, an orbiting outpost that commercial and international partners will build together. This agreement strengthens the broad effort by the United States to engage international partners in sustainable lunar exploration as part of the Artemis program and to demonstrate the technologies needed for human missions to Mar

Beijing (XNA) Jan 13, 2021
China is creating a new line of rocket engines for its upcoming space missions, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) announced Tuesday. According to the state-owned satellite and rocket maker, progress has been made in key technologies for a hydrogen/oxygen high-thrust staged combustion cycle engine, which will serve the country's heavy-lift carrier rockets.