Copernical Team
A touch of sun heats up material scieces at ESTEC
From ESA's Materials and Electrical Components Laboratory - one of a suite of labs based at the ESTEC technical centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands - a view from an intricate test campaign for the next generation of European weather satellites.
The near infrared detector assembly of the Flexible Combined Instrument (FCI) imager aboard the Meteosat Third Generation - Imaging (MTG - I) sate NASA orders satellite container and trolley from RUAG Space
RUAG Space, a leading supplier to the space industry, received a direct order from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and will deliver a large satellite container and a multipurpose trolley for NASA satellites. The total order volume for both container and trolley is worth approximately 2 million Euros.
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From 2022 Exercise bike in space helps keep crew fit
During a recent video sent from the core module of China's space station Tianhe (Harmony of Heavens), an exercise bike attracted lots of attention from viewers.
China launched its seventh manned spaceflight Shenzhou XII, on June 17, with three astronauts aboard for a three-month mission, during which they require regular exercise.
On June 23, astronaut Nie Haisheng opened a package c Homemade spacesuits ensure safety of Chinese astronauts in space
China's self-developed spacesuits have ensured the safety of astronauts during their stay in the space station core module Tianhe and while performing extravehicular activities (EVAs) outside the module.
The space gears include intravehicular spacesuits and extravehicular spacesuits, according to different scenarios, said Zhang Wanxin, director of the astronaut suit project under the Astro Thousands of galaxies classified in a blink of an eye
Astronomers have designed and trained a computer program which can classify tens of thousands of galaxies in just a few seconds, a task that usually takes months to accomplish.
In new researchm astrophysicists from Australia have used machine learning to speed up a process that is often done manually by astronomers and citizen scientists around the world.
"Galaxies come in different New clues to why there's so little antimatter in the universe
Imagine a dust particle in a storm cloud, and you can get an idea of a neutron's insignificance compared to the magnitude of the molecule it inhabits.
But just as a dust mote might affect a cloud's track, a neutron can influence the energy of its molecule despite being less than one-millionth its size. And now physicists at MIT and elsewhere have successfully measured a neutron's tiny effe Billionaire Blastoff: Rich riding own rockets into space
LHAASO measures Crab Nebula brightness, yields new UHE gamma-ray standard
The Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO), one of China's key national science and technology infrastructure facilities, has accurately measured the brightness over 3.5 orders of magnitude of the standard candle in high-energy astronomy, thus calibrating a new standard for ultra-high-energy (UHE) gamma-ray sources. The standard candle is the famous Crab Nebula, which evolved from the "guest star" recorded by the imperial astronomers of China's Song Dynasty.
LHAASO has also discovered a photon with an energy of 1.1 PeV (1 PeV = one quadrillion electronvolts), indicating the presence of an extremely powerful electron accelerator—about one-tenth the size of the solar system—located in the core region of the Crab Nebula. The accelerator can energize electrons to a level 20,000 times greater than what CERN's Large Electron-Positron Collider (LEP) can ever achieve, thus approaching the absolute theoretical limit posed by classical electrodynamics and ideal magnetohydrodynamics.
Meet the open-source software powering NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter
When NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter hovered above the Red Planet April 19 on its maiden voyage, the moment was hailed as the first instance of powered, controlled flight on another planet. Figuring out how to fly on Mars, where the air is thin but gravity is about a third of that on Earth, took years of work. Along with the challenge of developing a craft that was up to the task, the mission needed software to make the unprecedented flights possible.
Image: Protecting the Meteosat Third Generation–Imaging satellite from the sun
From ESA's Materials and Electrical Components Laboratory—one of a suite of labs based at the ESTEC technical center in Noordwijk, the Netherlands—a view from an intricate test campaign for the next generation of European weather satellites.
The near infrared detector assembly of the Flexible Combined Instrument (FCI) imager aboard the Meteosat Third Generation—Imaging (MTG—I) satellite was found to be susceptible to unwanted "stray light" from the sun.
A solution was proposed to reduce this vulnerability: a very thin metal mask would be glued atop the assembly, with carefully designed slits that would allow light to penetrate only in the desired areas, minimizing the entry of stray light.
But the feasibility of this solution needed to be tested, in order to demonstrate if the alloy cover would remain securely in place as incoming direct sunlight heats it up repeatedly during moments of sun intrusion.
Accordingly, a new feature was added to the Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) facility, part of the Materials and Electrical Components Lab. Originally designed as a vacuum chamber to expose samples to mono-energetic electrons down to cryogenic temperature, the ESD was upgraded to host an optical rack to hold a light source to simulate sunlight exposure onto the sample.