Copernical Team
China is using mythology and sci-fi to sell its space programme to the world
On the morning of June 17, China launched its long-awaited Shenzhou-12 spacecraft, carrying three Chinese astronauts - or taikonauts - towards the Tianhe core module. The module itself was launched at the end of April, forming part of the permanent Tiangong space station, which is planned to remain in orbit for the next ten years.
China's construction of its own space station stems from th Orphan cloud discovered in galaxy cluster
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New observations made with ESA’s X-ray XMM Newton telescope have revealed an “orphan cloud” – an isolated cloud in a galaxy cluster that is the first discovery of its kind.
A lot goes on in a galaxy cluster. There can be anything from tens to thousands of galaxies bound together by gravity. The galaxies themselves have a range of different properties, but typically contain systems with stars and planets, along with the material in between the stars – the interstellar medium. In between the galaxies is more material – tenuous hot gas known as the intercluster medium. And sometimes in
LightSail 2 has now been in space for 2 years, and should last even longer before re-entering the atmosphere
The Planetary Society's crowdfunded solar-sailing CubeSat, LightSail 2, launched on June 25th 2019, and two years later, the mission is still going strong. A pioneering technology demonstration of solar sail capability, LightSail 2 uses the gentle push of photons from the Sun to maneuver and adjust its orbital trajectory. Within months of its launch, LightSail 2 had already been declared a success, breaking new ground and expanding the possibilities for future spacecraft propulsion systems. Since then, it's gone on to test the limits of solar sailing in an ongoing extended mission.
One of the primary goals of that extended mission is to try out the spacecraft in different modes of operation, learning along the way how to sail efficiently and effectively. Even though two years of flying in the harsh orbital environment has begun to degrade the sail, software updates, learned experience, and careful debugging efforts have ensured that LightSail 2 is still flying exceptionally well. Shrinkage, crinkles, and delamination need to be continually monitored, but in spite of them, the team reports that LightSail 2's current "orbit decay rates…are the lowest we've seen since the early days of the mission.
Unique exoplanet photobombs Cheops study of nearby star system
While exploring two exoplanets in a bright nearby star system, ESA’s exoplanet-hunting Cheops satellite has unexpectedly spotted the system’s third known planet crossing the face of the star. This transit reveals exciting details about a rare planet “with no known equivalent”, say the researchers.
China building new space environment monitoring station
China has started building a monitoring station as part of a network to study space weather, according to China's National Space Science Center (NSSC).
The NSSC, which is affiliated to Chinese Academy of Sciences, said the station is being built in Siziwang Banner, North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region. Spread over 400 mu (about 26.67 hectares), it is expected to be completed in 2 NASA helps map impact of COVID-19 lockdowns on harmful air pollution
Early in the pandemic, it was expected that satellite imagery around the world would show cleaner air as a result of COVID-19 lockdowns. But not all pollutants were taken out of circulation. For tiny airborne-particle pollution, known as PM 2.5, researchers using NASA data found that variability from meteorology obscured the lockdown signals when observed from space.
"Intuitively you would Revisiting a quantum past for a fusion future
"I'm going back. It's almost like a cycle in your life," muses physicist Abhay Ram. Ram, a principal research scientist at the Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) at MIT, is returning to a field he first embraced as a graduate student at the Institute 50 years ago: quantum mechanics. Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, he is exploring different pathways for using the power and speed of Virgin Orbit selects new VP of Flight and Launch
Virgin Orbit has selected Tyler Grinnell to serve as the team's new Vice President of Flight and Launch. As Virgin Orbit works to further evolve its commercial launch services, Tyler will play a key role in enabling the Flight and Launch teams to achieve the operating pace and efficiencies required to serve the company's growing customer manifest.
Tyler brings with him a decade and a half Iridium awarded $30M contract by the US Army
Iridium Communications has announced it has been awarded a research and development contract worth up to $30 million by the United States Army (Army) to develop a payload to be hosted on small satellites that supports navigation systems, guidance and control for the global positioning system (GPS) and GPS-denied precision systems.
The new experimental Iridium payload is intended to be host China's Long March rocket has world's highest success rate: expert
The success rate of the launch of China's Long March carrier rockets is the highest in the world, a space scientist said here Thursday.
Long Lehao, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a chief designer of Long March rockets, said the rocket series have completed 375 launches and stressed that the accuracy of putting satellites into orbit and the number of launch times a