Copernical Team
Indian spacecraft heads towards center of solar system
India's sun-monitoring spacecraft has crossed a landmark point on its journey to escape "the sphere of Earth's influence", its space agency said, days after the disappointment of its moon rover failing to awaken.
The Aditya-L1 mission, which started its four-month journey towards the center of the solar system on September 2, carries instruments to observe the sun's outermost layers.
"The spacecraft has escaped the sphere of Earth's influence," the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said in a statement late Saturday.
Aditya, named after the Hindu sun deity, has traveled 920,000 kilometers (570,000 miles), just over half the journey's total distance.
At that point, the gravitational forces of both astronomical bodies cancel out, allowing the mission to remain in a stable halo orbit around our nearest star.
"This is the second time in succession that ISRO could send a spacecraft outside the sphere of influence of the Earth, the first time being the Mars Orbiter Mission", the agency added.
In August, India became the first country to land a craft near the largely unexplored lunar south pole, and just the fourth nation to land on the moon.
Record-breaking launch of SpaceX's Starlink satellites
SpaceX pushed back the launch time from the original T-0 of 6:49 p.m. EDT (2249 UTC Sep. 30) more than three hours later due to the weather condition. At 10:00 p.m. EDT (0200 UTC Sep. 30), a Falcon 9 rocket launched 22 of SpaceX's "V2 Mini" internet satellites for its Starlink communications network from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) in Florid NASA's Perseverance captures dust-filled Martian whirlwind
The lower portion of a Martian dust devil was captured moving along the western rim of Mars' Jezero Crater by NASA's Perseverance rover on Aug. 30, 2023, the 899th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. The video, which was sped up 20 times, is composed of 21 frames taken four seconds apart by one of the rover's Navcams.
Much weaker and generally smaller than Earth's tornadoes, dust devils are one of the mechanisms that move and redistribute dust around Mars. Scientists study them to better understand the Martian atmosphere and improve their weather models.
Using data from the imagery, mission scientists determined that this particular dust devil was about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) away, at a location nicknamed "Thorofare Ridge," and moving east to west at about 12 mph (19 kph). They calculated its width to be about 200 feet (60 meters). And while only the bottom 387 feet (118 meters) of the swirling vortex are visible in the camera frame, the scientists could also estimate its full height.
Space Systems Command's TAP Lab to accelerate innovation in space domain awareness
Space Systems Command (SSC), the United States Space Force (USSF) field command, has opened a Tools Applications and Processing (TAP) Lab in Colorado Springs to address critical challenges in space domain awareness. Designed with an open framework to encourage government, industry, academic, and allied collaboration, SSC's newest TAP Lab will engage external partners through Project Apollo, slat Evergreen Innovations manages All-Domain Network at Northern Strike Exercise
Evergreen Innovations LLC ("Evergreen"), a tactical communications integrator, reports it has successfully managed the All-Domain Network (ADN) during the Northern Strike 23-2 reserve component readiness exercise held July-August at the National All-Domain Warfighting Center, in Michigan.
Northern Strike 23-2, conducted under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Defense's National Guard Artel partners with Rivada for US Space Force contract
Artel LLC a provider of secure network communication services to U.S. government agencies, has been awarded a Commercial Satellite Communications Proliferated Low Earth Orbit (p-LEO) contract from the U.S. Space Force and is partnering with Rivada Space Networks to provide the next generation network critical to support U.S. Government communications.
Based in the U.S, Artel is a carrier-a ANSRs to Hard AI Questions
How can we build robust, assured, and therefore trustworthy AI-based systems? That question lies at the heart of DARPA's Assured Neuro Symbolic Learning and Reasoning (ANSR) program.
"Informally, trust is an expression of confidence in an autonomous system's ability to perform an underspecified task," said Dr. Alvaro Velasquez, DARPA's ANSR program manager. "Ensuring autonomous systems wil Eutelsat investors approve OneWeb merger for satellite internet
Shareholders of European satellite operator Eutelsat approved Thursday a $3.4 billion merger deal with Britain's OneWeb, with the new entity out to become a global broadband internet champion to rival the likes of Elon Musk's Starlink.
The approval came at an extraordinary general meeting for a partnership targeting sales of "some two billion euros ($2.1 billion) in 2027", equivalent to doub Week in images: 25-29 September 2023
Week in images: 25-29 September 2023
Discover our week through the lens
Earth from Space: Southern Patagonian Ice Field
Image:
Part of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field with its white glaciers and aquamarine lakes is featured in this Copernicus Sentinel-2 image from 10 January 2023.