ESA’s Mars Express has captured the rare moment of Mars’ small moon Deimos passing in front of Jupiter and its four largest moons ­– the focus of ESA’s upcoming Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer launching next year. Celestial alignments like these enable a more precise determination of the martian moons’ orbits.

Washington DC (UPI) Oct 12, 2021
Nicole Mann, spacecraft commander of NASA's SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavor, just arrived at the International Space Station last week wearing a spacesuit designed decades ago for male test pilots. The suit, originally developed for Space Shuttle missions that started in 1981, has been upgraded through the years, but has far outlasted its original 15-year design. All that will change

Greenbelt MD (SPX) Oct 13, 2022
Micrometeorites are a potential hazard for any space mission, including NASA's Mars Sample Return. The tiny rocks can travel up to 50 miles per second. At these speeds, "even dust could cause damage to a spacecraft," said Bruno Sarli, NASA engineer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland. Sarli leads a team designing shields to protect NASA's Mars Earth Entry System from

Washington DC (UPI) Oct 12, 2021
After a string of setbacks, the U.S. space agency, NASA, said Wednesday it would try again to conduct its Artemis I test flight to the moon on Nov. 14. NASA said it's found a 69-minute launch window that opens shortly after noon EST on Nov. 14 for the mission. Crews in late September were forced to scrub a launch and move the $4.1 billion rocket from the launch pad back to its st

Alameda CA (SPX) Oct 13, 2022
Astra Space, Inc. ("Astra") (Nasdaq: ASTR) announced that it has reached an agreement with Maxar Technologies ("Maxar") (TSX:MAXR) to supply Astra Spacecraft Engines. The propulsion systems will be used in Maxar's proliferated low Earth orbit (LEO) spacecrafts, which support a wide variety of global coverage missions, including Earth observation, communications and national security. Astra expec

Wallops Island, VA (SPX) Oct 13, 2022
Rocket Lab USA, Inc. (Nasdaq: RKLB) reports that the Electron rocket to be launched in the Company's first mission from U.S. soil has arrived at Launch Complex 2 in Virginia. The mission will deploy satellites for radio frequency geospatial analytics provider HawkEye 360 and will be Rocket Lab's first lift-off from Launch Complex 2 at Virginia Space's Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport within

Utrecht, The Netherlands (SPX) Oct 13, 2022
At a slow pace, the Moon is moving away from the Earth and the Earth is rotating more slowly around its axis. To say something about these changes in the distant past, geologists use information stored in rocks and fossils. But the further back in time they look, the more difficult it becomes to retrieve this information. An international team of earth scientists has now managed to accurately de

Paris (ESA) Oct 13, 2022
We have now discovered 30 039 near-Earth asteroids in the Solar System - rocky bodies orbiting the Sun on a path that brings them close to Earth's orbit. The majority of these were discovered in the last decade, showing how our ability to detect potentially risky asteroids is rapidly improving. An asteroid is called a near-Earth asteroid (NEA) when its trajectory brings it within 1.3 Astro

Washington DC (SPX) Oct 13, 2022
Analysis of data obtained over the past two weeks by NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) investigation team shows the spacecraft's kinetic impact with its target asteroid, Dimorphos, successfully altered the asteroid's orbit. This marks humanity's first time purposely changing the motion of a celestial object and the first full-scale demonstration of asteroid deflection technology.

Leicester UK (SPX) Oct 13, 2022
The cocktail of chemicals that make up the frozen surfaces on two of Jupiter's largest moons are revealed in the most detailed images ever taken of them by a telescope on Earth. Planetary scientists from the University of Leicester's School of Physics and Astronomy have unveiled new images of Europa and Ganymede, two future destinations for exciting new missions to the Jovian system.