Moon water imager integrated with NASA's Lunar Trailblazer
Tuesday, 27 December 2022 08:02JPL's cutting-edge instrument, which will provide insights into the lunar water cycle and composition of the Moon's surface, has been incorporated into the small satellite. Lunar Trailblazer, NASA's mission to understand lunar water and the Moon's water cycle led by Caltech in Pasadena, California, is one step closer to launching next year. Earlier this month, the agency's Jet Propulsion Laborat
New technique reveals changing shapes of magnetic noise in space and time
Tuesday, 27 December 2022 08:02Electromagnetic noise poses a major problem for communications, prompting wireless carriers to invest heavily in technologies to overcome it. But for a team of scientists exploring the atomic realm, measuring tiny fluctuations in noise could hold the key to discovery. "Noise is usually thought of as a nuisance, but physicists can learn many things by studying noise," said Nathalie de Leon,
New study models the transmission of foreshock waves towards Earth
Tuesday, 27 December 2022 08:02An international team of scientists led by Lucile Turc, an Academy Research Fellow at the University of Helsinki and supported by the International Space Science Institute in Bern has studied the propagation of electromagnetic waves in near-Earth space for three years. The team has studied the waves in the area where the solar wind collides with Earth's magnetic field called foreshock region, an
Three time dimensions, one space dimension
Tuesday, 27 December 2022 08:02How would our world be viewed by observers moving faster than light in a vacuum? Such a picture would be clearly different from what we encounter every day. We should expect to see not only phenomena that happen spontaneously, without a deterministic cause, but also particles traveling simultaneously along multiple paths - argue theorists from universities in Warsaw and Oxford. Also the ve
Virgin Orbit' Launcherone Systems given green light for upcoming mission
Tuesday, 27 December 2022 08:02The U.K. Civil Aviation Authority has issued launch and range control licenses to Virgin Orbit (Nasdaq: VORB) to undertake the first satellite launch from UK soil. The granting of these licenses represents a major step forward for the historic Start Me Up mission, and reflects the CAA's concurrence that all reasonable steps have been taken by Virgin Orbit to ensure the desired safety, security,
Inauguration of mainland Europe's first satellite launch complex
Tuesday, 27 December 2022 08:02On 13 January 2023, the Swedish head of state, King Carl XVI Gustaf, together with European and Swedish political dignitaries will visit Esrange Space Center in northern Sweden to cut the ribbon of a new spaceport that will significantly reshape the European space landscape. After years of preparation and construction, European mainland's first orbital launch complex, Spaceport Esrange, will be
Martian winter wonderland across Ultimi Scopuli
Tuesday, 27 December 2022 08:02Christmas and winter spirit - also on Mars. Impact craters connected by a striped, coloured ribbon can be seen in the final and very wintry HRSC Mars image of this year. We wish all readers of our martian image series, published together with the European Space Agency (ESA) and Freie Universitat Berlin, happy holidays! Image data from the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA's
The 10 Days of Christmas: Sols 3689-3698
Tuesday, 27 December 2022 08:02On the first sol of Christmas, Curiosity will bring to us; one APXS analysis, one ChemCam analysis and a multitude of Mastcam, MAHLI and RMI images! On the second sol of Christmas, Curiosity will bring to us; more ChemCam RMI images, more Mastcam images, more Navcam images and drive to a new, exciting location. To allow for the MSL science team and engineers to take some time off over the
Op-ed | Hazards don’t stop at the Kármán line
Monday, 26 December 2022 08:59To ensure the safety of spaceflight travelers from launch to landing, the United States should consider the continuity of a single executive agency overseeing commercial human spaceflight activities.
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NASA begins construction on asteroid-detecting space telescope
Sunday, 25 December 2022 11:55Construction is set to begin on NASA's Near-Earth Object Surveyor, a space telescope designed to search for hard-to-find comets and asteroids that approach the area near Earth. The NEO Surveyor passed a technical programmatic review and will now move into the construction phase. "The mission supports the objectives of NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) at NASA He
Congress adds $1.7 billion for U.S. Space Force in 2023 spending bill
Saturday, 24 December 2022 19:17The 2023 omnibus spending package includes $26.3 billion for the U.S. Space Force, nearly $1.7 billion more than the Pentagon requested
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Senate passes orbit debris cleanup bill
Friday, 23 December 2022 19:16The Senate passed legislation that would direct NASA to establish a program to remove orbital debris, but supporters of the bill will have to try again in the next Congress to enact it.
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Video: Flight control, space weather and debris: What an astronaut needs to know
Friday, 23 December 2022 15:19Recently, Andreas Mogensen, now getting ready for his "Huginn" mission to the ISS in 2023, stopped by ESA's ESOC mission control center in Darmstadt, Germany, to meet with some of the experts who keep our satellites flying.
Andreas usually works at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston as an ISS "capcom," and we don't often see him in Europe. A few months back, while returning to Germany for some training at ESA's Astronaut Center in Cologne, we seized the opportunity to ask him if he'd like to stop over in Darmstadt for a look behind the scenes at mission control, and he immediately answered, "yes!"
Andreas studied aeronautical engineering with a focus on "guidance, navigation and control of spacecraft" and we thought he'd be delighted to meet with the teams at mission control doing precisely that sort of work for our robotic missions.
We figured he'd also enjoy meeting colleagues from our Space Safety program, especially the ones working on space debris and space weather, as these are crucial areas that influence the daily life of astronauts on the ISS.
Connecting the Dots | Speeding up the satellite regulatory machine
Friday, 23 December 2022 14:35The quadrennial wait for updating global spectrum rules stands in stark contrast to the rapid pace of change now sweeping through space and terrestrial communications.
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The Rest of 2022’s Notable Nine
Friday, 23 December 2022 14:18Ukraine and Elon Musk weren't the only big stories of 2022. These seven commanded our attention with actions that will reverberate well into 2023.
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