Copernical Team
A Titan mission could refuel on site and return a sample to Earth
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This decade promises to be an exciting time for space exploration. Already, the Perseverance rover has landed on Mars and begun conducting science operations. Later this year, the next-generation James Webb Space Telescope, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), and Lucy spacecraft (the first mission to Jupiter's Trojan asteroids) will launch. Before the decade is out, missions will also be sent to Europa and Titan to extend the search for signs of life in our solar system.
Currently, NASA's plan for exploring Titan (Saturn's largest moon) is to send a nuclear-powered quadcopter named Dragonfly to explore the atmosphere and surface. However, another possibility that was presented this year as part of the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program is to send a sample-return vehicle with Dragonfly that could fuel up using liquid methane harvested from Titan's surface.
Known as A Titan Sample Return Using In-Situ Propellants, this mission would present some serious advantages over conventional sample-return missions. Ordinarily, missions to distant celestial objects either need to bring along enough propellant for the return trip (which means a lot of added mass and higher costs), or to have a nuclear battery that can provide power for several years.
Maps to improve forest biomass estimates
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Fluctuations in the carbon-rich biomass held within the world’s forests can contribute to, or slow, climate change. A series of new maps of above ground biomass, generated using space observations, is set to help our understanding of global carbon cycling and support forest management, emissions reduction and sustainable development policy goals.
Ten years of safer skies with Europe’s other satnav system
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With 26 satellites in orbit and more than two billion receivers in use, Europe’s Galileo satellite navigation system has made a massive impact. But our continent has another satnav system that has been providing safety-of-life services for ten years now – chances are that you’ve benefited from it without noticing.
The history of space debris creation
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Learning lessons from the past on space debris Astronauts in crewed missions to Mars could misread vital emotional cues
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Living for nearly 2 months in simulated weightlessness has a modest but widespread negative effect on cognitive performance that may not be counteracted by short periods of artificial gravity, finds a new study published in Frontiers in Physiology. While cognitive speed on most tests initially declined but then remained unchanged over time in simulated microgravity, emotion recognition speed continued to worsen. In testing, research participants were more likely to identify facial expressions as angry and less likely as happy or neutral.
"Astronauts on long space missions, very much like our research participants, will spend extended durations in microgravity, confined to a small space with few other astronauts," reports Mathias Basner, professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.
Lightning strikes played a vital role in life's origins on Earth
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Lightning strikes were just as important as meteorites in creating the perfect conditions for life to emerge on Earth, geologists say.
Minerals delivered to Earth in meteorites more than 4 billion years ago have long been advocated as key ingredients for the development of life on our planet.
Scientists believed minimal amounts of these minerals were also brought to early Earth throu Cosmic lens reveals faint radio galaxy
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Radio telescopes are the world's most sensitive radio receivers, capable of finding extremely faint wisps of radio emission coming from objects at the farthest reaches of the universe. Recently, a team of astronomers used the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) to take advantage of a helping hand from nature to detect a distant galaxy that likely is the faintest r New 3D Printed CubeSat measures electromagnetic effects of space storms
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Today Roboze, a manufacturer of industrial 3D printing technology for extreme end-use applications, announced it has been selected by the University of Colorado Boulder to optimize the design and 3D printed components for a CubeSat project within the college's department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences. The CubeSat will spend at least six months in orbit measuring electromagnetic waves emitted LAMOST reveals new footprints of the Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus merger event
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Looking up at the starry sky, the deep Universe appears quiet and mysterious. It is hard to imagine that the ancient dwarf galaxy Enceladus violently collided and was torn apart by our own Milky Way Galaxy, leaving behind the cries of a whole new generation of children from the hundred-handed giant.
Recently, SCIENCE CHINA: Physics, Mechanics and Astronomy published an (Editor's Focus) art Ancient light illuminates matter that fuels galaxy formation
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Using light from the Big Bang, an international team led by Cornell University and the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has begun to unveil the material which fuels galaxy formation.
"There is uncertainty on the formation of stars within galaxies that theoretical models are unable to predict," said lead author Stefania Amodeo, a Cornell postdoctoral researc