Sydney, Australia (SPX) Mar 18, 2025
A research team from China has engineered a six-legged robotic system inspired by insects, aiming to revolutionize how space mining is conducted on the moon and asteroids. Unlike mining on Earth, extraterrestrial excavation faces unique obstacles due to low-gravity environments. The moon's gravity is about one-sixth of Earth's, and asteroids often have even weaker gravitational pull, makin

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Mar 18, 2025
Axiom Space has partnered with Siemens to enhance the design and development of its commercial space projects by implementing tools from the Siemens Xcelerator software suite. This collaboration aims to streamline workflows and support the creation of next-generation space infrastructure, including Axiom's commercial space station and its advanced spacesuit initiatives. "After an extensive

Baltimore MD (SPX) Mar 18, 2025
The James Webb Space Telescope has captured its first direct images of carbon dioxide in a planet outside the solar system in HR 8799, a multiplanet system 130 light-years away that has long been a key target for planet formation studies. The observations provide strong evidence that the system's four giant planets formed in much the same way as Jupiter and Saturn, by slowly building solid

London, UK (SPX) Mar 19, 2025
SuperSharp Space Systems Ltd (SuperSharp), a spin-off from the University of Cambridge, has marked two major achievements on its path toward space deployment. The UK Space Agency has awarded the company Pounds 5 million to support an in-orbit demonstration of its innovative unfolding thermal infrared (TIR) telescope, designed to aid climate change mitigation. Simultaneously, SuperSharp has final

Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Mar 18, 2025
Researchers in Japan have leveraged advanced artificial intelligence to explore the distant regions of our galaxy, revealing previously undetected cosmic structures. Led by Osaka Metropolitan University, the team created a deep learning model capable of sifting through immense datasets from space telescopes, uncovering numerous bubble-like formations absent from existing astronomical records.

Paris (AFP) Mar 19, 2025
Europe's Euclid space telescope, which is on a mission to shed light on the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy, released its first data Wednesday with a little help from volunteers and artificial intelligence. The telescope launched in 2023, aiming to chart one third of the sky - encompassing 1.5 billion galaxies - to create what has been billed as humanity's most accurate 3D map of

Paris (AFP) Mar 19, 2025
Dark energy, the mysterious force thought to be driving the ever-faster expansion of the universe, appears to be changing over time, according to new observations released Wednesday. If dark energy is in fact weakening, it would likely mean that science's understanding of how the universe works will need to be rewritten. The new findings come from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument

Berkeley CA (SPX) Mar 20, 2025
The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) is mapping millions of celestial objects to better understand dark energy: the mysterious driver of our universe's accelerating expansion. This week, the DESI collaboration released a new collection of data for anyone in the world to investigate. The dataset is the largest of its kind, with information on 18.7 million objects: roughly 4 million sta

Berlin, Germany (SPX) Mar 19, 2025
The complexity of artificial intelligence (AI), particularly neural networks modeled on the human brain, often sparks apprehension due to their opaque nature. While the societal implications of such systems vary by context, Dr. Jonas Glombitza of the Erlangen Center for Astroparticle Physics (ECAP) at Friedrich-Alexander Universitat Erlangen-Nurnberg (FAU) underscores a unique contrast. He notes

Santiago (AFP) Mar 19, 2025
Chile said Wednesday it was reviewing an agreement for the construction of a Chinese astronomical observatory on its soil, a project that has drawn criticism from Washington as it jostles with Beijing for influence in Latin America. Under an agreement signed by President Xi Jinping in 2016 with Chile's Catholic University of the North (UCN), the Ventarrones Astronomical Park was to be built