Copernical Team
US 'strongly condemns' N. Korean space launch
The White House on Tuesday strongly condemned North Korea over its space launch, calling it a "brazen violation" of UN sanctions that could destabilize the region.
The launch "raises tensions, and risks destabilizing the security situation in the region and beyond," National Security Council Spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement.
North Korean state media reported early Wednes Hydrogen detected in lunar samples, points to resource availability for space exploration
Cairt and Wivern Earth Explorer candidates go forward
ESA has reached a significant milestone in its commitment towards a deeper understanding of Earth's dynamic processes and addressing pressing environmental challenges with the selection of two new candidates – Cairt and Wivern – to progress to the next development phase as part of the process of realising the Agency’s eleventh Earth Explorer satellite mission.
SDI Announces New Tech Demo Competition for Government Modernization
The Space and Defense Innovation (SDI) team has officially announced the launch of its Ignite Competition, a pivotal event designed to bridge the gap between groundbreaking technology and the federal sector's needs. This demo competition presents an unprecedented opportunity for tech companies to directly demonstrate their innovative solutions to key federal sector experts, furthering the U.S.'s University of Helsinki researchers solve cosmic conundrum
Our own Milky Way galaxy is part of a much larger formation, the local Supercluster structure, which contains several massive galaxy clusters and thousands of individual galaxies. Due to its pancake-like shape, which measures almost a billion light years across, it is also referred to as the Supergalactic Plane.
Most galaxies in the universe fall into one of two categories: firstly, ellipt Investigating the contribution of gamma-ray blazar flares to neutrino flux
Blazars belong to the family of active galactic nuclei called quasars. What differentiates them from quasars is that the flares ejected out of these active galactic nuclei are pointed toward the Earth. These flares contain high-energy cosmic rays which are released from the core of these galaxies as jets spanning many light years. Such cosmic rays can interact with photons to produce subatomic p CAPSTONE marks one year in near rectilinear halo orbit
Terran Orbital Corporation (NYSE: LLAP) mars the one-year milestone of the CAPSTONE mission in a lunar Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO). CAPSTONE, designed, built, and integrated by Terran Orbital and owned by Advanced Space, has demonstrated significant achievements during its mission.
CAPSTONE accomplished its primary objective within the first six months in NRHO, successfully testing Earth bacteria could make lunar soil more habitable for plants
A series of planned crewed lunar missions worldwide have inspired a new wave of research in growing plants on the moon to sustain life. A new study by Chinese agricultural scientists found that bacteria on Earth soil could offer a solution.
Published in the journal Communications Biology in early November, the study showed that three species of bacteria could increase the amount of phospho In 2024, Space Coast gears up for most astronaut launches since '09
The business of sending humans into space has not yet risen to the levels seen during the space shuttle program, but 2024 could see the most U.S.-based orbital launches in 15 years.
There are seven missions slated from either Kennedy Space Center or Cape Canaveral Space Force Station that look to place 26 humans into orbit. It's the highest number of crew launching from the Space Coast since 2009. That year saw five shuttle launches with 35 humans on board.
The seven planned launches would also be the most since the eight space shuttle launches in 1997.
The shuttle era finished with only three launches in 2010 and 2011 before its retirement, and U.S.-based launches did not happen again until the successful May 2020 liftoff of SpaceX's Demo-2 mission flying the Crew Dragon Endeavour to the International Space Station with humans on board for the first time.
Since then, SpaceX has been the only orbital U.S.-based launcher of humans in the game, mixing up a combination of missions under NASA's Commercial Crew Program to the ISS as well as private missions to both the station and standalone orbital flights.
NASA's 'flawless' heat shield demo passes the test
A little more than a year ago, a NASA flight test article came screaming back from space at more than 18,000 mph, reaching temperatures of nearly 2,700°F before gently splashing down in the Pacific Ocean. At that moment, it became the largest blunt body—a type of reentry vehicle that creates a heat-deflecting shockwave—ever to reenter Earth's atmosphere.
The Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator (LOFTID) launched on Nov. 10, 2022, aboard a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket and successfully demonstrated an inflatable heat shield. Also known as a Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (HIAD) aeroshell, this technology could allow larger spacecraft to safely descend through the atmospheres of celestial bodies like Mars, Venus, and even Saturn's moon, Titan.