Copernical Team
Destination Moon: Is it time for us to send astronauts back?
The series For All Mankind (2019) is a fictional alternate history that imagines a world where the Soviet Union was the first power to send an astronaut to the moon. From that starting point, the two rival superpowers compete to establish their own lunar station.
Just a few short years later, the scenario is no fantasy. Fifty years after the Apollo 11 mission in 2019 the United States announced its intention to return to the Moon in 2024. In light of the concept of "New Space", this new ambition highlights a growing geostrategic competition, particularly given China's precipitous rise.
Artemis, one step ahead
To succeed on this mission, NASA has promoted the Artemis program, a consortium led by the United States that brings together eight other countries—Australia, Canada, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom. NASA and Brazil signed a statement of intent in December 2020 to join the program. Each participant will contribute to the completion of the mission with technical and scientific support.
NASA is also counting on the private sector, including the SpaceX Starship (SN1), to fulfill the human landing system (HLS) program.
HIRAX: Looking deep into the universe for answers about dark matter
How is matter distributed within our universe? And what is the mysterious substance known as dark energy made of? HIRAX, a new large telescope array comprising hundreds of small radio telescopes, should provide some answers. Among those instrumental in developing the system are physicists from ETH Zurich.
"It's an exciting project," says Alexandre Refregier, Professor of Physics at ETH Zurich, as he considers the futuristic-looking visualization from South Africa. The image shows a scene in the middle of the Karoo semidesert, far away from larger settlements, with rows upon rows of more than 1,000 parabolic reflectors all directed towards the same point. At first glance, one might assume this is a solar power station, but it's actually a large radio telescope that over the coming years should provide cosmologists with new insights into the makeup and history of our universe.
China to send 3 male astronauts to its space station in June
A three-member crew of male astronauts will blast off next month for a three-month mission on China's new space station, according to a space official who was the country's first astronaut in orbit.
Save the date: Living Planet Symposium 2022
It’s time to block your agendas to make sure you don’t miss out on the biggest Earth observation conference in the world – ESA’s next Living Planet Symposium, which is set to take place on 23–27 May 2022 at the World Conference Center in Bonn, Germany.
UMass Amherst astronomer reveals never-before-seen detail of the center of our galaxy
New research by University of Massachusetts Amherst astronomer Daniel Wang reveals, with unprecedented clarity, details of violent phenomena in the center of our galaxy. The images, published recently in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, document an X-ray thread, G0.17-0.41, which hints at a previously unknown interstellar mechanism that may govern the energy flow and potentiall Dark energy survey releases most precise look at the universe's evolution
In 29 new scientific papers, the Dark Energy Survey examines the largest-ever maps of galaxy distribution and shapes, extending more than 7 billion light-years across the Universe. The extraordinarily precise analysis, which includes data from the survey's first three years, contributes to the most powerful test of the current best model of the Universe, the standard cosmological model. However, Hubble inspects a contorted spiral galaxy
This striking image showcases the unusually contorted appearance of NGC 2276, an appearance caused by two different astrophysical interactions - one with the superheated gas pervading galaxy clusters, and one with a nearby galactic neighbour.
The interaction of NGC 2276 with the intracluster medium - the superheated gas lying between the galaxies in galaxy clusters - has ignited a burst of New NASA Student Challenge offers hands-on tech development
NASA will initiate a new competition for the 2021-22 school year, providing student teams a chance to design, build, and launch experiments on suborbital rockets and high-altitude balloon flights. NASA and Future Engineers, the challenge administrator, will offer a series of virtual events for educators to hear from agency experts and learn more about this exciting opportunity for students. Official: Chinese astronauts go to space station next month
A three-member crew of male astronauts will blast off next month for a three-month mission on China's new space station, according to a space official who was the country's first astronaut in orbit.
Chinese cargo spacecraft docks with orbital station
An automated spacecraft docked with China's new space station Sunday carrying fuel and supplies for its future crew, the Chinese space agency announced.