Washington (AFP) Sept 13, 2021
For the first time on Wednesday, SpaceX is due to send into orbit a crew made up entirely of complete novices, without a professional astronaut on board. The four passengers are supposed to embody the opening-up of space to everyone, giving the mission its name: Inspiration4. A billionaire, Jared Isaacman, is behind the project. It was he who chartered the mission, at his own expense,

Virgin Galactic is further delaying its next SpaceShipTwo suborbital flight in order to check a potential issue the company says is unrelated to an ongoing FAA investigation.

SpaceNews

Sydney, Australia (The Conversation) Sep 09, 2021
Step by step, Australia is inching its way towards more autonomy in defence. On Wednesday, Defence Minister Peter Dutton was reported to have signalled greater access to US missile technology will be a key test of the US-Australia alliance at a closed meeting of the American Chamber of Commerce in Australia. In March Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced the defence department woul

Paris (AFP) Sept 8, 2021
The French defence ministry on Wednesday announced plans to significantly boost the country's four-year-old cyber warfare force, citing the "growing number and gravity" of hacking attacks on the country. The government had already planned to add an additional 1,100 recruits to a unit created in response to the growing number of cyber attacks on the West, mostly blamed on Russia and China.

Mountain View CA (SPX) Sep 13, 2021
The Allen Telescope Array, an ensemble of 42 antennas used in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), is once again threatened by wildfires. The scientists and engineers normally on-site have been evacuated as a precautionary measure, and in response to an order from the Shasta County Sheriff's Office. The Dixie Fire, which is currently approximately 12 miles south of the Arra

Greenbelt MD (SPX) Sep 13, 2021
When you help build a satellite the size of a shoebox, you learn pretty much everything about it, says Emil Atz, a PhD candidate in Mechanical Engineering at Boston University. You learn how to write a proposal to fund it, how to place the screws that hold it together, how to test each instrument to ensure it functions properly. And then you learn how to say goodbye. "It's a scary fe

Bonn, Germany (SPX) Sep 13, 2021
The German Federal Government is turning to efficient start-ups in its quest to ensure independent and competitive access to space for Europe. With their ideas and vision, they can accelerate the development of new technologies in the launcher market. To further that goal, the German Aerospace Center Lampoldshausen site signed an agreement with the Spanish start-up Pangea Aerospace this summer 2

Washington DC (SPX) Sep 13, 2021
NASA has selected Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, California, to provide launch services for the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-U (GOES-U) mission. GOES-U will provide advanced imagery and atmospheric measurements of Earth's weather, oceans, and environment, as well as real-time mapping of total lightning activity and improved monitoring of solar activity

Washington DC (UPI) Sep 10, 2021
The first two rock samples examined by NASA's Mars rover Perseverance give scientists a firm belief that water inundated Jezero Crater for a sustained period of time, the agency announced Friday. "We determined salt granules in the rock indicate it was exposed to water," Julia Goreva, a NASA scientist for the rover program, said in a news conference from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in

Washington (AFP) Sept 10, 2021
NASA's Perseverance Mars rover has now collected two rock samples, with signs that they were in contact with water for a long period of time boosting the case for ancient life on the Red Planet. "It looks like our first rocks reveal a potentially habitable sustained environment," said Ken Farley, project scientist for the mission, in a statement Friday. "It's a big deal that the water was th