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23 April: watch Mission Alpha launch live

Wednesday, 21 April 2021 11:30
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Crew-2 training in Dragon spacecraft

Latest: NASA and SpaceX now are targeting 23 April at 10:49 BST (11:49 CEST) for the launch of the Crew-2 mission to the International Space Station due to unfavourable weather conditions along the flight path on Thursday.

French ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet is returning to the International Space Station on his second spaceflight. The mission, which is called Alpha, will see the first European to launch on a US spacecraft in over a decade. Thomas is flying on the Crew Dragon, alongside NASA astronauts Megan McArthur and Shane Kimbrough, and Japanese astronaut Aki Hoshide.

24 April: watch Mission Alpha docking live

Wednesday, 21 April 2021 11:30
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Crew-2 training in Dragon spacecraft

French ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet is returning to the International Space Station on his second spaceflight. The mission, which is called Alpha, saw the first European to launch on a US spacecraft in over a decade. Thomas is flying on the Crew Dragon, alongside NASA astronauts Megan McArthur and Shane Kimbrough, and Japanese astronaut Aki Hoshide.

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NASA’s NICER probes the squeezability of neutron stars
NASA’s Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), at center, is an X-ray telescope aboard the International Space Station. Credit: NASA

Matter in the hearts of neutron stars—dense remnants of exploded massive stars—takes the most extreme form we can measure. Now, thanks to data from NASA's Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), an X-ray telescope on the International Space Station, scientists have discovered that this mysterious matter is less squeezable than some physicists predicted.

The finding is based on NICER's observations of PSR J0740+6620 (J0740 for short), the most massive known star, which lies over 3,600 light-years away in the northern constellation Camelopardalis. J0740 is in a binary star system with a white dwarf, the cooling remnant of a Sun-like star, and rotates 346 times per second. Previous observations place the neutron star's mass at about 2.1 times the Sun's.

"We're surrounded by normal matter, the stuff of our everyday experience, but there's much we don't know about how matter behaves, and how it is transformed, under extreme conditions," said Zaven Arzoumanian, the NICER science lead at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

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Hide and seek—how NASA’s Lucy mission team discovered Eurybates' satellite
Hubble images of Eurybates and its satellite on Jan. 3, 2020, when the satellite was visible (circled in green), and on Dec. 11, 2019, when the satellite was too close to Eurybates to be seen. Credit: NASA/Hubble/K. Noll/SwRI

On Jan. 9, 2020, NASA's Lucy mission officially announced that it would be visiting not seven, but eight asteroids. As it turns out, Eurybates, one of the asteroids along Lucy's path, has a small satellite.

Though searching for satellites is one of the mission's central goals, finding these tiny worlds before Lucy is launched gives the team the opportunity to investigate their orbits and plan for more detailed follow-up observations with the spacecraft.

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Illustration of satellite coverage for telecommunications services.

HELSINKI — China is to oversee the construction and operation of a national satellite internet megaconstellation through coordinating the country’s major space actors. 

Recent comments by senior officials indicate that plans are moving ahead to alter earlier constellation plans by space sector state-owned enterprises and possibly make these part of a larger “Guowang” or “national network” satellite internet project.

Arrival of world-first test facility

Wednesday, 21 April 2021 09:39
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Arrival of world-first test facility Image: Arrival of world-first test facility

Alpha mission

Wednesday, 21 April 2021 09:05

20 years of Europeans on the Space Station

Wednesday, 21 April 2021 08:57
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20 years of Europeans on the Space Station Image: 20 years of Europeans on the Space Station
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Washington DC (UPI) Apr 20, 2021
SpaceX and NASA plan to send four astronauts to the International Space Station on Thursday from Florida aboard the first reused Crew Dragon capsule to carry people. Liftoff of the flight-proven spacecraft, Endeavour, and Falcon 9 rocket is planned for 6:11 a.m. EDT from Complex 39 at Kennedy Space Center. The space agency declared the mission "go for launch" after a launch readiness re
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Canberra, Australia (SPX) Apr 21, 2021
In 1994, physicist Miguel Alcubierre proposed a radical technology that would allow faster than light travel: the warp drive, a hypothetical way to skirt around the universe's ultimate speed limit by bending the fabric of reality. It was an intriguing idea - even NASA has been researching it at the Eagleworks laboratory - but Alcubierre's proposal contained problems that seemed insurmounta
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Melbourne, Australia (SPX) Apr 21, 2021
Yesterday at 9pm Australian Eastern standard time, the Ingenuity helicopter - which landed on Mars with the Perseverance rover in February - took off from the Martian surface. More importantly, it hovered for about 30 seconds, three metres above the surface and came right back down again. It may not sound like a huge feat, but it is. Ingenuity's flight is the first powered flight of an air
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Los Angeles CA (SPX) Apr 21, 2021
The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter departed Earth for its 293 million mile trip to Mars aboard the Perseverance Rover last July. However, Ingenuity's most important journey was only about 10 feet. That's the altitude the small helicopter hovered just above the surface of Mars, marking a major milestone for humanity: the launch was the first powered flight on another planet and proof that it's possibl
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Boca Raton FL (SPX) Apr 21, 2021
American Pacific Corporation, a leading manufacturer of propulsion related materials for the Aerospace, Space and Defense industries, announced today that it has made a minority investment in Frontier Aerospace, a leader in the space propulsion industry. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Frontier Aerospace marks American Pacific's first investment since being acquired by AE Indu
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Bay St. Louis MS (SPX) Apr 21, 2021
Crews at NASA's Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, worked April 19-20 to remove the first flight core stage of the agency's Space Launch System rocket from the B-2 Test Stand in preparation for its transport to Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Operations required crews to lift the core stage from its vertical placement in the stand and lower it to a horizontal position on the
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London, UK (SPX) Apr 21, 2021
The next Arianespace mission is planned from Vostochny Cosmodrome with Soyuz on April 26, to deliver 36 satellites into orbit. By operating this fifth flight on behalf of OneWeb, Arianespace will bring the total fleet to 182 satellites in Low Earth Orbit. Arianespace is proud to share in the fulfilment of its customer's ultimate ambition: providing internet access for everyone, everywhere.
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