Copernical Team
Chang'e-5 samples reveal how young volcanism occurred on the Moon
A new study led by Prof. CHEN Yi from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IGGCAS) provides an answer to the question of how young volcanism occurred on the Moon.
The researchers found that mantle melting-point depression due to the presence of fusible, easily melted components could generate young lunar volcanism.
Their findings were published Ascent satellite marks end of mission objectives
The Air Force Research Laboratory's small satellite named Ascent has completed all of its mission objectives and is performing extended operations to characterize the survivability of the commercial-off-the-shelf, or COTS, bus electronics in the geosynchronous Earth orbit, or GEO, space environment.
Ascent, launched Dec. 7, 2021, is a 12-unit CubeSat developed within the AFRL Space Vehicle Designing the trajectory of a microsatellite swarm from the macro-micro perspective
As an emerging multi-satellite cooperative flight mode, microsatellite swarm has become an important future research issue for distributed space systems due to their advantages of low cost, rapid response, and collaborative decision-making. To address the coordination of swarms for autonomous agents, a probabilistic guidance approach has been investigated, which contained sub-swarms with differe US Space Command to Transfer Space Object Tracking to Department of Commerce
Right now, U.S. Space Command tracks more than 47,000 objects in space. But there are plans to transfer that responsibility to the Department of Commerce, an effort that will allow Spacecom to focus more on what's happening in space rather than just on the tracking of objects there, the Spacecom commander said.
"My current priority is to invest in space domain awareness. To ... gain a bett ISRO launches 36 OneWeb satellites
OneWeb has confirmed the successful deployment of 36 satellites launched by NewSpace India Limited (NSIL), from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC- SHAR) in Sriharikota, India. This launch by ISRO and NSIL is one of the biggest commercial orders by India's premier space organization, and the first using the LVM3 rocket.
The lift-off took place on Sunday, 23rd October 2022 at 00.07hrs loc China completes test of vacuum liquid oxygen-methane rocket engine
China has completed a test of its largest-thrust vacuum liquid oxygen-methane engine, which was designed for use on a commercial rocket, the engine maker said Thursday.
Developed by the Chinese private rocket company LandSpace, the engine, coded TQ-15A, has a vacuum thrust of up to 836 kilonewtons. It will be used as the second-stage main engine for the second batch of the company's ZQ-2 r NASA to increase Artemis fleet, orders 3 more crew capsules
NASA is furthering its plans to set up a space station on the moon and send the first astronauts to Mars by ordering three more crew capsules for its Artemis mission.
The mission's primary contractor Lockheed Martin announced the plans for three additional Orion spacecraft on Thursday. The cost of the three capsules is about $1.99 billion.
The new Orion crew capsules will be used India launches 36 internet satellites delayed by Ukraine war
Partial solar eclipse from Iceland to India on Tuesday
A partial solar eclipse will be visible across a swathe of the Northern Hemisphere on Tuesday, with amateur astronomers warned to take care watching the rare phenomenon.
The eclipse will start at 0858 GMT in Iceland and end off the coast of India at 1302 GMT, crossing Europe, North Africa and the Middle East on its way, according to the IMCCE institute of France's Paris Observatory.
Solar eclipses occur when the Moon passes between the Sun and Earth, casting its shadow down onto our planet.
A total solar eclipse happens when the Moon completely blocks the Sun's disk, momentarily plunging a portion of the Earth into complete darkness.
However Tuesday's eclipse is only partial, and the "Moon's shadow will not touch the surface of the Earth at any point," the Paris Observatory said in a statement.
Designing the trajectory of microsatellite swarms from the macro-micro perspective
As an emerging multi-satellite cooperative flight mode, the microsatellite swarm has become an important future research issue for distributed space systems. It offers low cost, rapid response, and collaborative decision-making. To address the coordination of swarms for autonomous agents, a probabilistic guidance approach has been investigated, which contained sub-swarms with different mission objectives.
Probabilistic swarm guidance enables autonomous microsatellites to generate their individual trajectories independently so that the entire swarm converges to the desired distribution shape. However, it is essential to avoid crowding for reducing the possibility of collisions between microsatellites, which adds challenges to the design of the collision avoidance algorithm.
In a research paper recently published in Space: Science & Technology, Bing Xiao, from School of Automation, Northwestern Polytechnical University, proposed a Centroidal Voronoi tessellation (CVT) and Model Predictive Control (MPC) based synthesis method, aiming to achieve macro-micro trajectory optimization of a microsatellite swarm.