Copernical Team
Eye of ESA's asteroid mission
This is the main camera that ESA's Hera mission for planetary defence will be relying on to explore and manoeuvre around the Didymos asteroid system.
Hera - named after the Greek goddess of marriage - will be, along with NASA's Double Asteroid Redirect Test (DART) spacecraft, humankind's first probe to rendezvous with a binary asteroid system, a little understood class making up around 15% Perseverance Mars rover to use AutoNav in new self driving mode
NASA's newest six-wheeled robot on Mars, the Perseverance rover, is beginning an epic journey across a crater floor seeking signs of ancient life. That means the rover team is deeply engaged with planning navigation routes, drafting instructions to be beamed up, even donning special 3D glasses to help map their course.
But increasingly, the rover will take charge of the drive by itself, us Billionaire blast off: Richard Branson plans space trip ahead of rival Bezos
Call it a space race for billionaires: British mogul Richard Branson one-upped rival Jeff Bezos on Thursday, announcing that he too will blast beyond Earth's atmosphere - as many as nine days ahead of the Amazon founder.
With both tycoons having created space tourism companies and positioned themselves as leaders in the suborbital-flights-for-the-wealthy sector, the move signaled clear if n Earth from Space: North Frisian Islands
Part of the Frisian Islands, a low-lying archipelago just off the coast of northern Europe, is visible in this image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.
First high-altitude drop test success for ExoMars parachute
After several weeks of bad weather and strong winds, the latest pair of high-altitude drop tests of the ExoMars parachutes took place in Kiruna, Sweden. The 15 m-wide first stage main parachute performed flawlessly at supersonic speeds, while the 35 m-wide second stage parachute experienced one minor damage, but decelerated the mock-up of the landing platform as expected.
Asteroid-hunting space telescope gets two-year mission extension
NEOWISE has provided an estimate of the size of over 1,850 near-Earth objects, helping us better understand our nearest solar system neighbors.
For two more years, NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) will continue its hunt for asteroids and comets—including objects that could pose a hazard to Earth. This mission extension means NASA's prolific near-Earth object (NEO) hunting space telescope will continue operations until June 2023.
Jeff Bezos picks female aerospace pioneer to launch with him
Russian rocket launches UK telecom satellites
A Russian Soyuz rocket carrying 36 UK telecommunication and internet satellites blasted off from the Vostochny cosmodrome in Russia's Far East on Thursday, the Roscosmos space agency said.
Images released by Roscosmos showed the Soyuz rocket, launched by Europe's Arianespace, taking off against dark skies at 1248 GMT.
"We have lift-off," OneWeb, a London-headquartered company, said on Twitter.
OneWeb is working to complete the construction of a constellation of low earth orbit satellites providing enhanced broadband and other services to countries around the world.
The company is competing against billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos in the race to provide fast internet for the world's remote areas via satellites.
The UK company plans for its global commercial internet service to be operational by next year, supported by some 650 satellites.
Arianespace, which has worked with Russia for close to two decades, is under contract to make 16 Soyuz launches between December 2020 and the end of 2022.
This year launches of 36 satellites took place in March, April and May.
"Taking our constellation to a total of 254 satellites, this launch will allow us to provide complete coverage north of 50 degrees latitude by the end of the 2021," OneWeb said.
Canada–US heatwave
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The heatwave now hitting parts of western Canada and the US has been particularly devastating. This Copernicus Sentinel-3 image shows land surface temperature. NASA satellites see upper atmosphere cooling and contracting due to climate change
The sky isn't falling, but scientists have found that parts of the upper atmosphere are gradually contracting in response to rising human-made greenhouse gas emissions. Combined data from three NASA satellites have produced a long-term record that reveals the mesosphere, the layer of the atmosphere 30 to 50 miles above the surface, is cooling and contracting. Scientists have long predicted this