Washington (AFP) June 25, 2021
A highly awaited US intelligence report on dozens of mysterious unidentified flying object sightings said most could not be explained, but did not rule out that some could be alien spacecraft. The unclassified report said researchers could explain only one of 144 UFO sightings by US government personnel and sources between 2004 and 2021, sightings that often were made during military trainin

Brisbane, Australia (SPX) Jun 30, 2021
Australia's leading launch services company, Gilmour Space Technologies, has secured $61 million (approximately $47 million USD) from global investors in what is the largest private equity investment raised by a space company in Australia. The Series C round, which includes US-based Fine Structure Ventures, Australian venture capital firms Blackbird and Main Sequence, and Australian supera

ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet and NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough performed three spacewalks in the span of 10 days to install two new solar arrays that will generate more electricity on the International Space Station.

As ESA’s Hera mission for planetary defence probes the Didymos twin asteroid system, it will be joined by a pioneering pair of breadbox-sized ‘CubeSats’. Juventas will perform radar soundings while Milani will image the bodies in a wider range of colours than the human eye can see, prospecting the mineral makeup of individual asteroid boulders.

Image: Eye of ESA’s asteroid mission

Image: For Asteroid Day, the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over the Shoemaker Impact Structure (formerly known as Teague Ring) in Western Australia.

ESA is diversifying its online presence with the launch of a Pinterest channel and is reaching out to this highly creative audience to plan a space-themed Halloween party around the launch of the international Webb mission later this year.

London UK (SPX) Jun 30, 2021
SKA Observatory Global Headquarters, UK, Tuesday 29 June 2021 - At a historic meeting of its Council last week, the recently formed SKA Observatory (SKAO) saw its Member States approve the start of construction of the SKA telescopes in Australia and South Africa. The two telescopes, currently designated SKA-Low and SKA-Mid, names which describe the radio frequency range they each cover, wi

Canberra, Australia (SPX) Jun 30, 2021
Scientists have for the first time detected black holes eating neutron stars, "like Pac Man", in a discovery documenting the collision of the two most extreme and enigmatic objects in the Universe. The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in the US and the Virgo gravitational-wave observatory in Italy have captured the gravitational waves from the death spiral and mer

Washington DC (SPX) Jun 30, 2021
Here on Earth, earthquakes and underwater volcanic eruptions may displace enough ocean water to create a tsunami, a drumbeat of waves reaching huge heights as they approach land. Now, astrophysicists have used computer simulations to show that in deep in space, tsunami-like structures may form on much bigger scales, from gas escaping the gravitational pull of a supermassive black hole. In