While the climate crisis is, unfortunately, a reality, it is all too easy to assume that every aspect of our changing world is a consequence of climate change. Assumptions play no role in key environmental assessments and mitigation strategies such as we will see in the upcoming UN climate change COP-26 conference – it’s the science and hard facts that are critical. New research published this week is a prime example of facts that matter. Using model projections combined with satellite data from ESA’s Climate Change Initiative, this latest research shows that the global rise in the temperature of

Senate appropriators want NASA to select a second company for its program to develop crewed lunar landers, but provided the agency with only a small increase in funding to support that.

SpaceNews

The classified Chinese satellite Shiyan-10 is now active, nearly three weeks after suffering an anomaly during launch that appeared to result in the loss of the spacecraft.

Chicago IL (SPX) Oct 18, 2021
Deep in the solar system, between Jupiter and Neptune, lurk thousands of small chunks of ice and rock. Occasionally, one of them will bump into Jupiter's orbit, get caught and flung into the inner solar system-towards the sun, and us. This is thought to be the source of many of the comets that eventually pass Earth. A new study lays out the dynamics of this little-understood system. Among

Moscow (Sputnik) Oct 19, 2021
The Financial Times earlier reported that the test of the alleged hypersonic glider vehicle by China this summer "caught the US government by surprise" as it purportedly demonstrated the great progress achieved by Beijing in this area. China did not carry out a test of hypersonic weapons, but instead carried out a trial of a spacecraft, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian has st

Beijing (XNA) Oct 19, 2021
China's Shenzhou XIII crewed spaceship successfully docked with the port of the space station core module Tianhe on Saturday, a move overseas experts have called another "key step" forward in China's space exploration. Three Chinese astronauts aboard the Shenzhou XIII will stay in orbit for six months, making China's longest yet crewed mission for space station construction. Denis Si

Beijing (XNA) Oct 19, 2021
The Chinese space test that drew great attention was made to verify reusable spacecraft technologies, not to test a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile, as some foreign media claimed, the Foreign Ministry said on Monday. Responding to questions about the test, ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said at a daily briefing at the ministry in Beijing that he was told it was a regular test flight by

Huntsville AL (SPX) Oct 06, 2021
Lockheed Martin has announced that the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) approved its Next Generation Interceptor (NGI) program's System Requirements Review (SRR) - six months after the initial development and demonstration contract award. The MDA's NGI program is designed to protect the United States from complex, rogue threat, ballistic missile attacks. The interceptor is an end-to-end d

Berlin, Germany (SPX) Oct 18, 2021
On 1 October 2021, an S50 solid-propellant rocket motor, which will form the first two stages of the new VLM-1 launch vehicle, successfully completed a static firing test in the operational area of Usina Coronel Abner (UCA), in Sao Jose dos Campos, Sao Paulo state, Brazil. The test was conducted by an engineering team from the Aeronautics and Space Institute, which is headquartered in Sao Jose d