Ursa Major to supply upper-stage engine for Astra’s new rocket
Monday, 24 April 2023 20:43
Rocket propulsion startup Ursa Major announced April 24 that Astra Space selected the company’s Hadley liquid engine to power the upper stage of its new Rocket 4 launch vehicle.
Report: Space Force could benefit from commercial data to monitor satellites and debris
Monday, 24 April 2023 19:39
The Space Force is investing in new sensors and technologies to better characterize objects in orbit, but is not taking full advantage of commercially available data and services, says a new report by the Government Accountability Office.
KMI advertises prices for debris removal
Monday, 24 April 2023 18:56
Kall Morris Inc. handed out a deck of cards at the Space Symposium to advertise prices the company plans to charge for grabbing space junk.
Is sex in space being taken seriously by the emerging space tourism sector?
Monday, 24 April 2023 18:19
What would a human conception in space mean for the sector? That's the situation posed by an international group of scientists, clinicians and other interested parties, who have authored a consultative green paper led by David Cullen, Professor of Astrobiology & Space Biotechnology at Cranfield University.
It highlights that the emerging space tourism sector has not openly considered or discussed the risks of sex in space or prepared suitable mitigation approaches. It argues it is unrealistic to assume all future space tourists will abstain from sexual activities—opening the possibility of human conception and the early stages of human reproduction occurring in space.
This appears to pose several risks, those of a biological nature such as embryo developmental risks and those of a commercial nature such as liability, litigation, and reputational damage. The authors recommend that an open discussion is now needed within the space tourism industry to consider the risks.
Open discussion on human conception in space tourism is lacking
Professor Cullen from Cranfield University led the work. He said, "Our starting point was a throwaway comment about sex in space, but when we checked, we were surprised the sector has not openly considered the risks and this led to the study.
Cultivating salad plants that can be grown on the Moon
Monday, 24 April 2023 17:48
NASA has finished its planning and is ready to go. Humans will soon be returning to the Moon—this time in a manned base. But, if this project is to succeed, astronauts must be able to grow their own food. Norwegian researchers are in the process of making this possible.
The lunar "soil," or regolith as geologists call it, is essentially a powder in which it is difficult to grow plants. As if this wasn't enough, the moon is characterized by temperatures that can reach 200 degrees during the day and fall to as low as minus 183 degrees at night.
So says SINTEF researcher Galina Simonsen. However, in spite of this, Simonsen and her colleagues working as part of the international project LunarPlant, which is being headed by NTNU Social Research and the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Space (CIRiS), believe that it will be possible to grow food plants on the moon.
UAE spacecraft takes close-up photos of Mars' little moon
Monday, 24 April 2023 16:07
A spacecraft around Mars has sent back the most detailed photos yet of the red planet's little moon.
The United Arab Emirates' Amal spacecraft flew within 62 miles (100 kilometers) of Deimos last month and the close-up shots were released Monday. Amal—Arabic for Hope—got a two-for-one when Mars photobombed some of the images.
Inmarsat Q&A | Mobile satellite services coming back stronger than a ‘90s trend
Monday, 24 April 2023 15:06
SpaceNews interviewed Peter Hardinger, Inmarsat’s chief technology officer, about how the operator plans to take advantage of emerging direct-to-smartphone capabilities that are breathing new life into the mobile satellite services industry.
Webb reveals primordial galaxy cluster 650 million years after the Big Bang
Monday, 24 April 2023 13:54
Every giant was once a baby, though you may never have seen them at that stage of their development. NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has begun to shed light on formative years in the history of the universe that have thus far been beyond reach: the formation and assembly of galaxies. For the first time, a protocluster of seven galaxies has been confirmed at a distance that astronomers refer to Potential Failure Modes of SpaceX's Starship
Monday, 24 April 2023 13:54
On April 20, 2023, a little after 9:30 A.M. eastern time SpaceX's new Starship system lifted off from the company's southeast Texas spaceport. This was an historic event because the Starship is the largest and most powerful rocket ever built. The ship ascended smoothly for the first several minutes, but as the vehicle approached the moment of stage separation an anomaly occurred that resulted in Starship moves fast and breaks things
Monday, 24 April 2023 13:54
Flying chunks of concrete, twisted metal sheets, craters blasted deep into the ground: the thunderous power of SpaceX's first test flight of Starship - the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built - inflicted serious damage on its Texas launch site.
Repairing the damage from Thursday's unmanned test flight is expected to take months, potentially delaying further launch attempts and slow Defying gravity
Monday, 24 April 2023 13:54
Surely it has ever happened to you to shake an open bag of mixed nuts. Have you noticed that after such a procedure, the largest nuts in the mixture - Brazil nuts - float to the top? The phenomenon of large objects rising to the surface of a mixture of small objects, bearing the professional name of granular convection, is popularly referred to "the Brazil nut effect" and occurs commonly in natu Webb reveals early-Universe prequel to huge galaxy cluster
Monday, 24 April 2023 13:00
Image:
The seven galaxies highlighted in this image from the NASA/ESA/CSA Telescope have been confirmed to be at a distance that astronomers refer to as redshift 7.9, which correlates to 650 million years after the big bang. This makes them the earliest galaxies yet to be spectroscopically confirmed as part of a developing cluster.
The seven galaxies confirmed by Webb were first established as candidates for observation using data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Frontier Fields program. The program dedicated Hubble time to observations using gravitational lensing, to observe very distant galaxies in detail. However, because Hubble cannot detect light
Maxar eyes summer launch of WorldView Legion imaging satellites
Monday, 24 April 2023 12:30
After years of delays, Maxar Technologies is preparing for the first launch this summer of its next-generation imaging satellites WorldView Legion.
What colour is an asteroid? Hyperspectral imager to find out
Monday, 24 April 2023 12:30
What colour is an asteroid? The latest instrument being prepared for ESA’s Hera mission for planetary defence will observe its target Dimorphos asteroid in a range of colours far beyond the limits of the human eye. In the process Hera’s HyperScout H hyperspectral imager will help prospect the asteroid’s mineral makeup – in the process helping to deduce how best to deflect future asteroids which might one day endanger Earth.
CAPSTONE Demonstrates Crosslink Capability with Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
Monday, 24 April 2023 06:57
The CAPSTONE mission team has provided an update on the spacecraft's operations since performing the Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO) insertion maneuver on November 13th, 2022. The spacecraft has spent 154 days operating in the NRHO, completing 23 NRHO revolutions, and executing six Orbit Maintenance Maneuvers (OMM) using approximately 1.8 m/s of fuel.
Despite issues with a thruster valv