Summer stargazing treat as Perseid meteor shower reaches its peak
Wednesday, 04 August 2021 12:35
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The Perseid meteor shower reaches its peak on the night of 11–12 August, giving skywatchers a potentially impressive summer treat. The meteors are best viewed from the northern hemisphere, and in ideal conditions with no clouds observers could see up to 50 an hour.
Meteors are the result of small particles entering the Earth's atmosphere at high speed, typically around 60 km per second.
What it takes to become Australia's first woman astronaut
Wednesday, 04 August 2021 12:31 Write a comment
I'm currently training to become Australia's first woman astronaut. I expect to fly my first suborbital mission sometime in 2023 as a payload specialist on a commercial mission. In other words, I'll be one of few certified crew members who can handle specialized scientific equipment aboard a suborbital spacecraft.
Once we're up there, my team and I expect to conduct research on Earth's atmosphere. It's an opportunity I consider out of this world. But it has taken a lot of effort for this dream to be realized.
My path to PoSSUM
As a female STEM and legal professional, my past jobs included working as a research scientist in mining and metals for BHP-Billiton, Rio Tinto and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO)—but I always loved space.
SpaceX surges Starship work despite FAA environmental review uncertainty
Wednesday, 04 August 2021 10:31 Write a comment
The unstoppable force of SpaceX’s recent surge in development of its Starship vehicle for its first orbital flight is in danger of colliding with an immovable object: an ongoing environment review that has no clear end date.
Europe’s Spaceport gains new radar
Wednesday, 04 August 2021 10:28 Write a comment
A new additional radar called Amazonie-I installed at Pariacabo, a high point in Kourou, French Guiana, was tested during the recent Ariane 5 launch from Europe’s Spaceport.
Japanese lunar lander company ispace raises $46 million
Wednesday, 04 August 2021 09:43 Write a comment
Japanese lunar lander developer ispace raised $46 million in a new funding round Aug. 4 to support future missions to the moon.
Space station mishap caused orbiting lab to rotate 1 1/2 times, NASA says
Wednesday, 04 August 2021 08:13 Write a comment
The International Space Station spun around 1 1/2 times on its main axis last week when a new Russian segment of the orbiting platform malfunctioned, a NASA spokesman said, as new details emerged about the incident.
"Mission control got alerts on the ground at the same time astronauts got an alert that the attitude [position] of the space station was changing," Dan Huot, a NASA public a The rise of oxygen on early Earth linked to changing planetary rotation rate
Wednesday, 04 August 2021 08:13 Write a comment
The rise of oxygen levels early in Earth's history paved the way for the spectacular diversity of animal life. But for decades, scientists have struggled to explain the factors that controlled this gradual and stepwise process, which unfolded over nearly 2 billion years.
Now an international research team is proposing that increasing day length on the early Earth-the spinning of the young Life in space: Preparing for an increasingly tangible reality
Wednesday, 04 August 2021 08:13 Write a comment
As a not-so-distant future that includes space tourism and people living off-planet approaches, the MIT Media Lab Space Exploration Initiative is designing and researching the activities humans will pursue in new, weightless environments.
Since 2017, the Space Exploration Initiative (SEI) has orchestrated regular parabolic flights through the ZERO-G Research Program to test experiments tha Iridium granted trio of regulatory approvals in Japan
Wednesday, 04 August 2021 08:13 Write a comment
Iridium Communications reports that Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) has approved regulatory amendments necessary to allow for Japanese adoption of Iridium Certus broadband, Iridium Controller-Pilot Data Link Communications (CPDLC) and other aeronautical services for aviation and Iridium's Global Maritime Distress and Safety System service (GMDSS).
Over the pas Finding the cause of a fatal problem in rocket engine combustors
Wednesday, 04 August 2021 08:13 Write a comment
Rocket engines contain confined combustion systems, which are, essentially, combustion chambers. In these chambers, nonlinear interactions among turbulent fuel and oxidizer flows, sound waves, and heat produced from chemical reactions, cause an unstable phenomenon called 'combustion oscillations.'
The force of these oscillations on the body of the combustion chamber-the mechanical stress o Boeing postpones Starliner capsule launch attempt over valve issue
Wednesday, 04 August 2021 08:13 Write a comment
Boeing postponed the launch of its Starliner spacecraft Tuesday due to problems detected with valves in the capsule's propulsion system and reset a potential launch for Wednesday midday.
"We are off for today. Recycling for tomorrow," Tory Bruno, CEO of rocket company United Launch Alliance tweeted Tuesday morning.
ULA had planned to launch an Atlas V rocket carrying the uncrewed Department of Energy to provide $100 million for high energy physics research
Wednesday, 04 August 2021 08:13 Write a comment
Today, the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Office of Science announced a plan to provide $100 million over the next four years for university-based research on a range of high energy physics topics through a new funding opportunity announcement (FOA). The objective of this funding is to advance knowledge of how the universe works at its most fundamental level.
"High energy physics play Lucy boxed to go
Wednesday, 04 August 2021 08:13 Write a comment
NASA's first spacecraft to explore the Trojan asteroids arrived Friday, July 30, at the agency's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. It is now in a cleanroom at nearby Astrotech, ready to begin final preparations for its October launch.
The mission has a 23-day launch period beginning on October 16. Lucy will undergo final testing and fueling prior to being moved to its launch pad at Ca DARPA Comb Technologies Yield Breakthroughs in Defense and Civilian Sectors
Wednesday, 04 August 2021 08:13 Write a comment
Revolutionary laser technologies pioneered in DARPA's Defense Sciences Office over the past decades are allowing Air Force researchers to precisely characterize combustion elements in next-generation jet engines and providing commercial gas and oil developers continuous, region-scale monitoring to rapidly detect methane leaks.
The Spectral Combs from UV to THz (SCOUT) program, which began Water as a metal - detected at BESSY II
Wednesday, 04 August 2021 08:13 Write a comment
Under normal conditions, pure water is an almost perfect insulator. Water only develops metallic properties under extreme pressure, such as exists deep inside of large planets. Now, an international collaboration has used a completely different approach to produce metallic water and documented the phase transition at BESSY II. The study is published now in Nature.
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