Moving along the Marker Band: Sols 3705-3707
Monday, 09 January 2023 07:51
Curiosity is continuing to make the most of the new year - both on Earth and on Mars which recently entered Mars Year 37, only a few days before the new year on Earth. After a successful drive along the slope below the Marker Band, we're ready for a full weekend.
On our first sol, ChemCam has a LIBS observation on the target 'Waimiri' followed by two mosaics on the Marker Band and the dist Astronomers use 'little hurricanes' to weigh and date planets around young stars
Monday, 09 January 2023 07:51
Little 'hurricanes' that form in the discs of gas and dust around young stars can be used to study certain aspects of planet formation, even for smaller planets which orbit their star at large distances and are out of reach for most telescopes.
Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the Institute for Advanced Study have developed a technique, which uses observations of these 'hur IXPE Team Profile; LASP at Colorado-Boulder
Monday, 09 January 2023 07:51
As NASA's Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer mission explores black holes, neutron stars, and other cosmic phenomena - helping to answer fundamental questions about extreme space environments - it relies on the mission operations team at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, or LASP.
Some 700 people - engineers, scientists, mission-operations personnel and data specialists - st Unpacking the "black box" to build better AI models
Monday, 09 January 2023 07:51
When deep learning models are deployed in the real world, perhaps to detect financial fraud from credit card activity or identify cancer in medical images, they are often able to outperform humans.
But what exactly are these deep learning models learning? Does a model trained to spot skin cancer in clinical images, for example, actually learn the colors and textures of cancerous tissue, or New discovery of sunscreen-like chemicals in fossil plants reveals UV radiation played a part in mass extinction events
Monday, 09 January 2023 07:51
New research has uncovered that pollen preserved in 250 million year old rocks contain compounds that function like sunscreen, these are produced by plants to protect them from harmful ultraviolet (UV-B) radiation. The findings suggests that a pulse of UV-B played an important part in the end Permian mass extinction event.
Scientists from the University of Nottingham, China, Germany and th Join the hive: send your ideas for CubeSat swarms
Monday, 09 January 2023 07:24
We all know the saying that there is strength in numbers. The next revolution in space technology could be the use of swarms of tiny spacecraft, called CubeSats, that work together to achieve things greater than what any lone spacecraft can. CubeSats, assemble!
Virgin Orbit ready for first U.K. launch
Sunday, 08 January 2023 21:31
Virgin Orbit is set to perform the first orbital launch from the United Kingdom as soon as Jan. 9, a milestone officials hailed as the start of a new era for the country’s space industry.
SpaceX gearing up for Falcon Heavy’s second national security launch
Sunday, 08 January 2023 16:28
SpaceX is aiming to launch Falcon Heavy’s second national security mission for the U.S. Space Force on Jan. 12 from Kennedy Space Center.
The post SpaceX gearing up for Falcon Heavy’s second national security launch appeared first on SpaceNews.
Scientists eager to analyze International Space Station experiments soon
Sunday, 08 January 2023 10:06
NASA is preparing for the return of multiple science experiments from the International Space Station in the hopes they might further aid mankind's future exploration of space.
A Dragon spacecraft that docked with the station on Nov. 27 is scheduled to return to Earth and splash down off the eastern coast of Florida on Jan. 9, NASA said in a press release.
The items being ferried Retired NASA satellite expected to fall to Earth on Sunday
Sunday, 08 January 2023 10:06
A retired NASA satellite is expected to fall to Earth on Sunday after spending nearly 40 years in space, space officials said Friday.
The U.S. Defense Department has predicted that the 5,400-pound Earth Radiation Budget Satellite will reenter the atmosphere sometime within a 17-hour window of 6:40 p.m. EST on Sunday, NASA said in a statement.
The satellite is expected to mostly b Defunct NASA satellite to reenter
Saturday, 07 January 2023 14:28
A defunct NASA satellite, launched nearly four decades ago, is predicted to reenter late Jan. 8 with a very small risk to people on the ground.
The post Defunct NASA satellite to reenter appeared first on SpaceNews.
Defunct NASA satellite reenters
Saturday, 07 January 2023 14:28A defunct NASA satellite, launched nearly four decades ago, is predicted to reenter late Jan. 8 with a very small risk to people on the ground.
The post Defunct NASA satellite reenters appeared first on SpaceNews.
Old NASA satellite falling from sky this weekend, low threat
Saturday, 07 January 2023 10:04
Once in 50,000-year comet may be visible to the naked eye
Saturday, 07 January 2023 09:55
A newly discovered comet could be visible to the naked eye as it shoots past Earth and the Sun in the coming weeks for the first time in 50,000 years, astronomers have said.
The comet is called C/2022 E3 (ZTF) after the Zwicky Transient Facility, which first spotted it passing Jupiter in March last year.
After traveling from the icy reaches of our Solar System it will come closest to the Sun on January 12 and pass nearest to Earth on February 1.
It will be easy to spot with a good pair of binoculars and likely even with the naked eye, provided the sky is not too illuminated by city lights or the Moon.
The comet "will be brightest when it is closest to the Earth", Thomas Prince, a physics professor at the California Institute of Technology who works at the Zwicky Transient Facility, told AFP.
Senators seek funding boost for NASA and NSF astrophysics programs
Friday, 06 January 2023 23:50
Five senators are asking the White House to add at least $300 million in the next budget proposal for NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support priorities from the astrophysics decadal survey.
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