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Copernical Team
US-European satellite will make world's first global freshwater survey
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Terran Orbital completes Space-to-Ground Optical Link demonstration on Pathfinder Technology Demonstrator 3
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Eutelsat, OneWeb plan to merge
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Preparing for the World's biggest radio telescope
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Russia to quit International Space Station 'after 2024'
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ESA showcases its space ambition at Farnborough airshow
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ESA’s efforts to ensure European citizens reap the benefits of space have been highlighted at a global aerospace event held in the UK.
NASA wants your help designing a starshade to observe exoplanets
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![Artist's concept of the prototype starshade, a giant structure designed to block the glare of stars so that future space telescopes can take pictures of planets. Credit: NASA/JPL NASA wants your help designing a starshade to observe exoplanets](https://scx1.b-cdn.net/csz/news/800a/2022/nasa-wants-your-help-d.jpg)
The field of exoplanet study has come a long way in recent decades. To date, 5,063 exoplanets have been confirmed in 3,794 systems beyond our own, with another 8,819 candidates awaiting confirmation. In the coming years, tens of thousands of more planets are expected to be found, thanks to next-generation observatories. The ultimate goal in this search is to find planets that are "Earth-like," meaning they have a good chance of supporting life. This is no easy task, as rocky planets located within their parent star's habitable zones (HZs) tend to orbit closely, making them harder to see.
To make this process easier, NASA is designing a hybrid observatory consisting of a "Starshade" that will block out a star's light so that a ground-based telescope can directly image planets orbiting it.
Explosive volcanic eruption produced rare mineral on Mars
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![NASA's Curiosity Mars rover snapped this low-angle self-portrait at the site where it drilled into a rock July 30, 2015, producing a powder (visible in foreground) that was later confirmed to contain the rare mineral tridymite. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS Explosive volcanic eruption produced rare mineral on Mars](https://scx1.b-cdn.net/csz/news/800a/2022/explosive-volcanic-eru.jpg)
Planetary scientists from Rice University, NASA's Johnson Space Center and the California Institute of Technology have an answer to a mystery that's puzzled the Mars research community since NASA's Curiosity rover discovered a mineral called tridymite in Gale Crater in 2016.
Tridymite is a high-temperature, low-pressure form of quartz that is extremely rare on Earth, and it wasn't immediately clear how a concentrated chunk of it ended up in the crater. Gale Crater was chosen as Curiosity's landing site due to the likelihood that it once held liquid water, and Curiosity found evidence that confirmed Gale Crater was a lake as recently as 1 billion years ago.
Greece battles wildfires on Lesbos island
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![Hundreds of residents and tourists have been evacuated from the Greek island of Lesbos after a wildfire broke out on the morning of 23 July. This image, captured by Sentinel-2, shows the active fire front which stretches for more than four km.](https://www.esa.int/var/esa/storage/images/esa_multimedia/images/2022/07/greece_battles_wildfires_on_lesbos_island/24380265-1-eng-GB/Greece_battles_wildfires_on_Lesbos_island_card_full.jpg)
Sumitomo invests in TAE Technologies for Fusion Reactor development
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