The Perseid meteor shower peaks this weekend and it's even better this year
Wednesday, 09 August 2023 16:39
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Video: The universe in a box: Preparing for Euclid's survey
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ESA's Euclid mission will create a 3D-map of the universe that scientists will use to measure the properties of dark energy and dark matter and uncover the nature of these mysterious components. The map will contain a vast amount of data, it will cover more than a third of the sky and its third dimension will represent time spanning 10 billion years of cosmic history.
But dealing with the huge and detailed set of novel data that Euclid observations will produce is not an easy task. To prepare for this, scientists in the Euclid Consortium have developed one of the most accurate and comprehensive computer simulations of the large-scale structure of the universe ever produced. They named this the Euclid Flagship simulation.
Running on large banks of advanced processors, computer simulations provide a unique laboratory to model the formation and evolution of large-scale structures in the universe, such as galaxies, galaxy clusters, and the filamentary cosmic web they form. These state-of-the-art computational techniques allow astrophysicists to trace the motion and behavior of an extremely large number of dark-matter particles over cosmological volumes under the influence of their own gravitational pull.
Clogged propellant lines doomed NASA lunar cubesat mission
Wednesday, 09 August 2023 16:14 Write a comment
A NASA lunar cubesat mission failed to go into orbit around the moon earlier this year when debris blocked propellant lines for the spacecraft’s thrusters.
The Smallsat Show-me Era
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The derivative impact on the smallsat industrial base is also clear: smallsat space hardware and launch companies that have built a track record can capitalize on this shift, driving growth and expanded moats, while newer entrants may find it increasingly difficult to carve out a defensible niche.
From Customization to Standardization
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Smallsats need standardizing now more than ever
The post From Customization to Standardization appeared first on SpaceNews.
BlackSky buys five Electron launches
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BlackSky, one of Rocket Lab’s biggest launch customers, has bought an additional five Electron launches for its next-generation imaging satellites.
Vyoma orders pilot satellites for debris-monitoring constellation
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German startup Vyoma has ordered two pilot satellites for its proposed space debris-monitoring constellation from EnduroSat, the eight-year-old Bulgarian cubesat specialist.
NASA's ComPair balloon mission readies for flight
Wednesday, 09 August 2023 13:46 Write a comment
A team in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, is preparing to fly a balloon-borne science instrument called ComPair, which will test new technologies for detecting gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light.
ComPair is slated to fly early in NASA's 2023 fall scientific balloon campaign, which opens on Thursday, Aug. 10, weather permitting.
"Lots of interesting science happens in the energy range that ComPair is designed to study," said Nicholas Kirschner, a graduate student at George Washington University in Washington and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who works on the mission. "These gamma rays are hard to capture with existing methods, so we need to create and test new ones. ComPair's flight gets us one step closer to putting a similar detector in space."
ComPair detects gamma rays with energies between 200,000 and 20 million electron volts. Visible light's energy falls between 2 and 3 electron volts, for comparison.
Supernovae and powerful explosions called gamma-ray bursts shine the brightest in this energy range.
Advanced Space selected for two NASA SBIR Phase I Awards
Wednesday, 09 August 2023 13:25 Write a comment
Advanced Space LLC., a leading space tech solutions company, is pleased to announce that NASA has selected two of our new Phase I concepts under the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.
The first project, won under the Flight Dynamics and Navigation Technologies subtopic, will support NASA's future efforts to design spacecraft trajectories for vehicles flying in cislunar spac Rocket Lab inks new deal to launch HASTE mission from Virginia
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Rocket Lab USA, Inc. (Nasdaq: RKLB) has signed a new launch services agreement with a confidential customer for a HASTE (Hypersonic Accelerator Suborbital Test Electron) mission from Launch Complex 2 at Virginia's Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport within NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in 2024.
The contract signing with a new customer came just days after Rocket Lab successfully launched the A frosty anniversary weekend for Curiosity: Sols 3909-3911
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Earth planning date: Friday August 4, 2023: We're planning a special weekend today - Saturday is the 11th (Earth) anniversary of Curiosity's landing! I was newly graduated from high school when I watched Curiosity touch down, and it still seems surreal sometimes that I get to be part of a mission I followed with such fascination back then.
We have an exciting anniversary (or 'landiversary' InSight study finds Mars is spinning faster
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Data sent by the spacecraft before it retired last December has provided new details about how fast the planet rotates and how much it wobbles. Scientists have made the most precise measurements ever of Mars' rotation, for the first time detecting how the planet wobbles due to the "sloshing" of its molten metal core. The findings, detailed in a recent Nature paper, rely on data from NASA's InSig India's moon mission takes another big step
Wednesday, 09 August 2023 13:25 Write a comment
The injection of Chandrayaan-3 into the lunar orbit and the subsequent moves marked a major milestone in India's ambitious $75-million lunar mission, experts said.
The Indian Space Research Organisation, or ISRO, on Sunday completed the Lunar-Orbit Insertion to put the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft into the moon's orbit.
The spacecraft carrying the Moon Mission-3 is expected to land on th Ingenuity flies again after unscheduled landing
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The helicopter performed a short hop to help the team better understand why its previous flight was interrupted.
NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter successfully completed its 54th flight on Aug. 3, the first flight since the helicopter cut its July 22 flight short. The 25-second up-and-down hop provided data that could help the Ingenuity team determine why its 53rd flight ended early. Space-based quantum science lab keeps getting better
Wednesday, 09 August 2023 13:25 Write a comment
The agency's Cold Atom Lab is getting its second major upgrade and will be using it to explore the quantum realm.
On Tuesday, Aug. 1, a major hardware update for NASA's Cold Atom Lab lifted off aboard a Northrop Grumman Cygnus resupply spacecraft on its way to the International Space Station. About the size of a small refrigerator, the lab is sometimes called the coolest place in the known