The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) spacecraft Einstein Probe is ready to launch in January 2024. Equipped with a new generation of X-ray instruments with high sensitivity and a very wide view, this mission will survey the sky and hunt for powerful blasts of X-ray light coming from mysterious celestial objects such as neutron stars and black holes.

Einstein Probe is a collaboration led by CAS with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE), Germany.

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Image: Ariane 6 smoke during combined test loading 3

Image: Ariane 6 during combined test loading 3

Image: Ariane 6 main stage final test firing

Last week, members of ESA’s astronaut class of 2022 embarked on their first overseas field trip. They visited NASA’s facilities at the Johnson Space Centre (JSC) in Houston, Texas, USA, to get familiar with the environment where they will spend a significant part of their training once assigned to a mission. 

Pasadena CA (SPX) Dec 21, 2023
At nearly 14,000 feet, Maunakea is the tallest mountain in Hawai'i, and the second tallest on any island on Earth. Clouds often settle below the mountain's barren, dark-brown summit, making the site one of the best for astronomy in the world. At the summit, one can find several of the world's finest telescopes, including the W. M. Keck Observatory, a partnership between Caltech and the Uni

Sydney, Australia (SPX) Dec 21, 2023
Helicity Space, a name that's beginning to resonate in the commercial space industry, recently heralded a significant advance in its quest to redefine space propulsion. The company has successfully secured a $5 million seed funding round, a move that not only underscores the industry's confidence in fusion technology but also marks a pivotal moment in space travel innovation. This round of

Greenbelt MD (SPX) Dec 21, 2023
The cosmos comes alive in an all-sky time-lapse movie made from 14 years of data acquired by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Our Sun, occasionally flaring into prominence, serenely traces a path through the sky against the backdrop of high-energy sources within our galaxy and beyond. "The bright, steady gamma-ray glow of the Milky Way is punctuated by intense, days-long flares of n

Paris (ESA) Dec 21, 2023
Despite our many years spent observing the cosmos with ever-more powerful telescopes, there remains much to learn about the Milky Way. We cannot leave our galaxy to get a full outside view of its shape and properties, as we do when we study other galaxies. We are embedded within it, and so are limited to mapping the Milky Way from the inside out - and from a single vantage point. At the st