Low-cost high resolution nighttime light data
Thursday, 28 January 2021 06:43
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New Light Technologies Inc. (NLT) is partnering with Alba Orbital to provide agencies in and outside of the US with innovative solutions that utilize the first available low-cost, high-resolution satellite nighttime light data.
Alba Orbital, headquartered in Scotland, has developed a unique PocketQube Satellite platform developed in partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA). The pla Dickinson’s guidance to space troops: Prepare for ’competitive and dangerous’ environment
Wednesday, 27 January 2021 21:38 Write a comment
WASHINGTON — The commander of U.S. Space Command warns in a new document that keeping satellites safe from hostile attack will require a coordinated response involving all elements of the U.S. military and allies.
Glavkosmos to sell seats on Soyuz missions
Wednesday, 27 January 2021 20:46 Write a comment
DOUGLAS, U.K. — Glavkosmos, the commercial arm of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, has announced its intent to enter the space tourism market, selling a minimum of four Soyuz seats to commercial astronauts through 2023.
Roscosmos has previously sold such seats through a long-standing relationship with American company Space Adventures.
35 years since Challenger launch disaster: 'Never forgotten'
Wednesday, 27 January 2021 20:32 Write a comment
NASA leaders, retired launch directors, families of fallen astronauts and space fans marked the 35th anniversary of the Challenger disaster on Thursday, vowing never to forget the seven who died during liftoff.
Thick lithosphere casts doubt on plate tectonics in Venus's geologically recent past
Wednesday, 27 January 2021 19:40 Write a comment
At some point between 300 million and 1 billion years ago, a large cosmic object smashed into the planet Venus, leaving a crater more than 170 miles in diameter. A team of Brown University researchers has used that ancient impact scar to explore the possibility that Venus once had Earth-like plate tectonics.
For a study published in Nature Astronomy, the researchers used computer models to recreate the impact that carved out Mead crater, Venus's largest impact basin. Mead is surrounded by two clifflike faults—rocky ripples frozen in time after the basin-forming impact. The models showed that for those rings to be where they are in relation to the central crater, Venus's lithosphere—its rocky outer shell—must have been quite thick, far thicker than that of Earth.
Thousands more satellites will soon orbit Earth—we need better rules to prevent space crashes
Wednesday, 27 January 2021 16:10 Write a comment
In recent years, satellites have become smaller, cheaper, and easier to make with commercial off the shelf parts. Some even weigh as little as one gram. This means more people can afford to send them into orbit. Now, satellite operators have started launching mega-constellations—groups of hundreds or even thousands of small satellites working together—into orbit around Earth.
Instead of one large satellite, groups of small satellites can provide coverage of the entire planet at once. Civil, military and private operators are increasingly using constellations to create global and continuous coverage of the Earth. Constellations can provide a variety of functions, including climate monitoring, disaster management or digital connectivity, like satellite broadband.
But to provide coverage of the entire planet with small satellites requires a lot of them. On top of this, they have to orbit close to Earth's surface to reduce interruption of coverage and communication delays. This means they take up an already busy area of space called low Earth orbit, the space 100 to 2,000km above the Earth's surface.
What did the solar system look like before all the planets migrated?
Wednesday, 27 January 2021 15:16 Write a comment
Early planetary migration in the solar system has been long established, and there are myriad theories that have been put forward to explain where the planets were coming from. Theories such as the Grand Tack Hypothesis an the Nice Model show how important that migration is to the current state of our solar system. Now, a team from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has come up with a novel way of trying to understand planetary migration patterns: by looking at meteorite compositions.
The researchers, led by postdoc Jan Render, had three key realizations. First, that almost all the meteorites that have fallen to Earth originated from the asteroid belt. Second, that the asteroid belt is known to have formed by sweeping material up from all over the solar system. And third, and perhaps most importantly, that they could analyze the isotopic signatures in meteorites to help determine where a given asteroid had formed in the solar system.
With that knowledge, they could then extrapolate out to other asteroids of the same type. There are approximately 100 different types of asteroids, with different isotopic signatures, in the asteroid belt.
ExoMars orbiter's 20000th image
Wednesday, 27 January 2021 14:00 Write a comment
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ExoMars orbiter's 20000th image Simulating space
Wednesday, 27 January 2021 12:54 Write a comment
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Simulating space Artificial intelligence behind 21st Century spaceflight
Wednesday, 27 January 2021 12:30 Write a comment
- Maintaining safety of operations and maximising scientific return are key concerns as satellites increase in number and complexity
- Artificial intelligence offers promising solutions to modern spaceflight challenges
- ESA and Germany’s DFKI institute have launched a new lab ‘ESA_Lab@DFKI’ for artificial intelligence research
NASA prepares for Mars 2020 landing
Wednesday, 27 January 2021 12:24 Write a comment
WASHINGTON — NASA’s Mars 2020 rover is on track for a landing next month that will begin in earnest an effort to return samples of the planet to Earth.
The spacecraft, launched July 30, is scheduled to land in Jezero Crater at 3:55 p.m.
Electron launch demonstrated enhanced kick stage
Wednesday, 27 January 2021 10:22 Write a comment
WASHINGTON — Rocket Lab stretched the performance of the kick stage of its Electron rocket on its most recent launch, the first in a series of milestones the company has set out for this year.
First evidence that water can be created on the lunar surface by Earth's magnetosphere
Wednesday, 27 January 2021 08:50 Write a comment
Mapped by Sentinel-1 for Vendée Globe safety
Wednesday, 27 January 2021 08:20 Write a comment
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Competitors of the Vendée Globe sailing race are now nearing the finishing point, but while they were near the treacherous iceberg-infested waters of the Southern Ocean they remained relatively safe thanks to satellite observations. On nights before a full moon, people go to bed later and sleep less
Wednesday, 27 January 2021 06:48 Write a comment
For centuries, humans have blamed the moon for our moods, accidents and even natural disasters. But new research indicates that our planet's celestial companion impacts something else entirely - our sleep.
In a paper published Jan. 27 in Science Advances, scientists at the University of Washington, the National University of Quilmes in Argentina and Yale University report that sleep cycles