60 years after Gagarin, Russia lags in the space race
Tuesday, 06 April 2021 08:48
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A station on the moon! A mission to Venus! A next generation spacecraft!
Sixty years after the Soviet Union made history by launching Yuri Gagarin into space on April 12, 1961, Russia continues to have lofty extraterrestrial ambitions, but its ability to realise them is more down to earth.
Project after project has been announced and then delayed, as grand designs fall victim to funding Mapping North Carolina's ghost forests from 430 miles up
Tuesday, 06 April 2021 08:48 Write a comment
Emily Ury remembers the first time she saw them. She was heading east from Columbia, North Carolina, on the flat, low-lying stretch of U.S. Highway 64 toward the Outer Banks. Sticking out of the marsh on one side of the road were not one but hundreds dead trees and stumps, the relic of a once-healthy forest that had been overrun by the inland creep of seawater.
"I was like, 'Whoa.' No leav Watch the Agenda 2025 media briefing
Tuesday, 06 April 2021 07:35 Write a comment
Director General Josef Aschbacher will present ESA Agenda 2025 at 1400 CEST (1200 GMT) on Wednesday 7 April 2021. ESA Agenda 2025 is a vision for ESA’s future prepared in consultation with the ESA Member States. It sets out strategic priorities and goals for the Agency, such as strengthening the ESA–EU relationship, boosting green and digital commercialisation, developing space for safety and security, addressing critical programme challenges and implementing the ESA transformation.
Watch the presentation and questions from the media on ESA WebTV from 1400 CEST.
SpaceFund Venture Capital Announces First Close of Second Fund
Tuesday, 06 April 2021 05:36 Write a comment
SpaceFund announced it has reached and surpassed the planned first close of $5 million for its $20 million BlastOff Fund today. The Houston and Austin-based company says commitments to the fund have reached $9 million as of Monday morning.
"We are thrilled to see how many investors are placing their trust in our team," said SpaceFund founder Rick Tumlinson. "We spent a lot of time slowly a RS-25 rocket engines return to launch Artemis missions
Tuesday, 06 April 2021 05:36 Write a comment
The rocket engine with one of the most storied histories in spaceflight, the RS-25, is returning to space for a second act - this time to send humans on the Artemis missions to explore the Moon.
As the space shuttle main engine, the RS-25 has a proven record of launching 135 missions spanning over three decades. At the end of the shuttle program in 2011, 16 RS-25 engines that helped build Burnt-out comet covered with talcum powder
Tuesday, 06 April 2021 05:36 Write a comment
The world's first ground-based observations of the bare nucleus of a comet nearing the end of its active life revealed that the nucleus has a diameter of 800 meters and is covered with large grains of phyllosilicate; on Earth large grains of phyllosilicate are commonly available as talcum powder. This discovery provides clues to piece together the history of how this comet evolved into its curre SwRI's 100-kg small satellite platform added to NASA's RDSO catalog
Tuesday, 06 April 2021 05:36 Write a comment
NASA has selected Southwest Research Institute's 100 kg-class small satellite (SmallSat) platform to be listed in the Rapid Spacecraft Development Office (RSDO) IV catalog used by the U.S. government to rapidly contract for flight-proven spacecraft. The Southwest Space Platform-100 (SwSP-100) is now available through the $6 billion, indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) Rapid Spacecraft German Space Agency Selects Lockheed Martin ISpace System For Space Situational Awareness
Tuesday, 06 April 2021 05:36 Write a comment
To obtain real-time awareness of the more than 300,000 objects orbiting the earth, the German Space Agency at DLR has selected Lockheed Martin's iSpace command and control system. The iSpace system tracks thousands of objects orbiting the earth by collecting data from a worldwide network of government, commercial and scientific community surveillance sensors.
The German Space Agency at DLR Dark Energy Survey physicists open new window into dark energy
Tuesday, 06 April 2021 05:36 Write a comment
The universe is expanding at an ever-increasing rate, and while no one is sure why, researchers with the Dark Energy Survey (DES) at least had a strategy for figuring it out: They would combine measurements of the distribution of matter, galaxies and galaxy clusters to better understand what's going on.
Reaching that goal turned out to be pretty tricky, but now a team led by researchers at Celebrating Galileo saving lives at 406 Day
Tuesday, 06 April 2021 05:36 Write a comment
Today is 406 Day - the annual campaigning day to spread awareness of the importance of emergency beacons, and the satellites that pick up their signals, including Europe's Galileo constellation. As well as letting people across the world find their way, Galileo also serves to detect SOS messages and relay them to authorities, contributing to saving many lives.
Such detections can happen an NASA's Lucy stretches its wings in successful solar panel deployment test
Tuesday, 06 April 2021 05:36 Write a comment
NASA's Lucy spacecraft has successfully completed thermal vacuum testing of both solar panels, the final step in checking out these critical spacecraft components in preparation for launch this fall. Once the Lucy spacecraft's solar panels are attached and fully extended, they could cover a five-story building.
Lucy, the 13th mission in NASA's Discovery Program, requires these large solar Microsoft and Thales work to automate satellite image processing
Tuesday, 06 April 2021 01:15 Write a comment
SAN FRANCISCO — Microsoft announced plans April 6 to move automated satellite image processing technology developed by Thales Alenia Space into its Azure Orbital platform.
With Thales Alenia’s DeeperVision software, “images downlinked by Earth observation satellites can be immediately and systematically analyzed as soon as they are produced,” according to a Thales Alenia news release.
Satellite operators weigh strategies to compete against growing Starlink network
Monday, 05 April 2021 23:07 Write a comment
WASHINGTON — As SpaceX continues to expand its Starlink communications network and promote its services, established satellite operators are figuring out strategies to remain competitive.
During the Satellite 2021 LEO Digital Forum April 6, Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX president and chief operating officer, said the company is moving forward with plans to offer Starlink satellite internet services directly to consumers and also is eyeing the U.S.
NASA's first weather report from Jezero Crater on Mars
Monday, 05 April 2021 20:26 Write a comment
The weather often plays a role in our daily plans. You might put on a light jacket when the forecast calls for a cool breeze or delay your travel plans because of an impending storm. NASA engineers use weather data to inform their plans, too, which is why they're analyzing the conditions millions of miles away on Mars.
The Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA) system aboard NASA's Perseverance rover first powered on for 30 minutes Feb. 19, approximately one day after the rover touched down on the Red Planet.
Early combined tests mimic Ariane 6 liftoff
Monday, 05 April 2021 14:30 Write a comment
Ariane 6 early combined tests at Latesys in Fos-sur-Mer, in France, have simulated the moment of liftoff when the umbilicals separate from the launch vehicle.