Pasadena CA (JPL) Sep 21, 2021
Charged with studying the Mississippi River Delta, NASA's Delta-X project was gearing up to collect data on Louisiana's coastal wetlands when Hurricane Ida barreled ashore in late August. The storm - a high-end Category 4 when it made landfall near Port Fourchon, Louisiana, on Aug. 29 - damaged buildings and infrastructure alike, resulting in power outages, flooding, and oil slicks in the Gulf o

Washington DC (UPI) Sep 22, 2021
The U.S. Space Force will take over satellite communications billets, funding and mission responsibility from the U.S. Army and Navy, the Department of Defense announced Wednesday. The transfer, which includes a total of 15 global units with 319 military and 259 civilian billets, is scheduled to be effective Oct. 1, if the Defense Department budget is passed and signed. "We're on

National Harbor MD (SPX) Sep 22, 2021
Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. "Jay" Raymond unveiled the Guardian Ideal and Space Force values during his speech Sept. 20, 2021, at the Air Force Association Air, Space, and Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland. The Guardian Ideal is the Space Force's foundational document outlining the service's boundary-pushing, innovative approach to talent management, from accession t

Washington (Sputnik) Sep 22, 2021
Russia already has deployed in low-earth orbit a "nesting doll" satellite armed with a weapon that can destroy US satellites vital for communications, command and control and precision targeting, Space Force Commander General John Raymond said on Tuesday. "Russia has a nesting doll satellite [in orbit] to destroy US satellites, armed with a weapon to destroy US satellites," Raymond told th

Washington DC (SPX) Sep 20, 2021
When it comes to a marriage with quantum theory, gravity is the lone holdout among the four fundamental forces in nature. The three others-the electromagnetic force, the weak force, which is responsible for radioactive decay, and the strong force, which binds neutrons and protons together within the atomic nucleus-have all merged with quantum theory to successfully describe the universe on the t

National Harbor MD (AFNS) Sep 21, 2021
Department of the Air Force Secretary, Frank Kendall, offered a blunt and unsparing blueprint Sept. 20 for the Air and Space Forces, Congress and others to follow if they are to meet - and overcome - challenges to the nation's security posed by China and others. Time is short, he said in a 30 minute, closely watched address to the Air Force Association's Air, Space, and Cyber Conference an

Blue Origin is seeking to overturn NASA’s award of a lunar lander contract to SpaceX by arguing that SpaceX’s proposal failed to meet requirements for reviews that made it “unawardable.”

SpaceNews

Exo-Space, a Los Angeles startup formed in 2020 to offer inexpensive easy-to-assemble cubesats, has pivoted in response to growing demand for on-orbit data processing.

SpaceNews

Californian startup Xona Space Systems has raised $8 million to fully fund an orbital demonstration next year of its navigation payload, which aims to provide an alternative to GPS and other global navigation satellite systems.

Video: 00:02:40

ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet takes you on a tour of the International Space Station like no other. Filmed with a 360 camera, the Space Station 360 series lets you explore for yourself alongside Thomas’s explanation – episode five is NASA’s Node-1, also known as Unity.

Unity is the module that connects the Russian segment of the International Space Station to the other modules. Launched on 4 December 1998 inside Space Shuttle Endeavour, it was joined to the Russian Zarya module two days later, forming the basis of the International Space Station. The cylindrical module has six docking ports