China says 'extremely low' risk of damage on Earth from rocket re-entry
Friday, 07 May 2021 07:19China said Friday the risk of damage on Earth from a rocket which fell out of orbit after separating from Beijing's space station was "extremely low", after the United States warned it could crash down onto an inhabited area.
Military experts in the US expect the body of the Long March 5B rocket to fall to the surface some time around Saturday or Sunday, but warned it was difficult to predict where it will land and when.
But Beijing downplayed the risk of any damage on Friday.
"The probability of causing harm to aviation activities or (on people and activities) on the ground is extremely low," foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said.
China says 'extremely low' risk of damage from rocket debris
Friday, 07 May 2021 07:19China said Friday the risk of damage on Earth from a rocket which fell out of orbit after separating from Beijing's space station was "extremely low", after the United States warned it could crash down onto an inhabited area.
Military experts in the US expect the body of the Long March 5B rocket to fall to the surface some time around Saturday or Sunday, but warned it was difficult to predict where it will land and when.
But Beijing downplayed the risk of any damage on Friday.
"The probability of causing harm to aviation activities or (on people and activities) on the ground is extremely low," foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said.
Earth from Space: Morbihan, France
Friday, 07 May 2021 07:00The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over Morbihan – a French department in the south of Brittany.
Starliner completes full space station mission simulation
Friday, 07 May 2021 03:35NASA and Boeing recently completed an integrated mission dress rehearsal of Starliner's uncrewed Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2) mission to the International Space Station for NASA's Commercial Crew Program. The campaign conducted largely inside Boeing's Houston-based Avionics and Software Integration Lab (ASIL) culminated in a five-day end-to-end mission simulation known as the ASIL Mission Rehea
"I felt really heavy:" astronauts describe returning to Earth on SpaceX capsule
Friday, 07 May 2021 03:35Four astronauts just returned from the International Space Station described on Thursday their reentry into Earth's atmosphere and ocean splashdown after more than 160 days in space. A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying the crew back to Earth splashed down off Florida early Sunday in NASA's first nighttime ocean landing in more than 50 years. "There was a point where I was just saying
Why Ingenuity's fifth flight will be different
Friday, 07 May 2021 03:35Around the time of our first flight, we talked a lot about having our "Wright brothers moment" at Mars. And that makes a lot of sense, since those two mechanically-minded bicycle builders executed the first powered, controlled flight on Earth, and we were fortunate enough to do the same 117 years later - on another planet. But the comparisons shouldn't stop with a first flight. Ingenuity's
Volcanoes on Mars could be active, raise possibility of recent habitable conditions
Friday, 07 May 2021 03:35Evidence of recent volcanic activity on Mars shows that eruptions could have taken place within the past 50,000 years, a paper by Planetary Science Institute Research Scientist David Horvath says. Most volcanism on the red planet occurred between 3 and 4 billion years ago, with smaller eruptions in isolated locales continuing perhaps as recently as 3 million years ago. But, until now, ther
Juice arrives at ESA's technical heart
Friday, 07 May 2021 03:35The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, Juice, has come 'home' to ESA's technical centre in the Netherlands to undergo an extreme environment test in Europe's largest thermal vacuum chamber to prepare for its journey to the outer Solar System. The spacecraft arrived at ESTEC, ESA's European Space Research and Technology Centre, from Airbus Friedrichshafen in Germany last week. It is now being unpa
Illuminating the Cosmic Dark Ages with a Lunar radio telescope
Friday, 07 May 2021 03:35The early-stage NASA concept could see robots hang wire mesh in a crater on the Moon's far side, creating a radio telescope to help probe the dawn of the universe. After years of development, the Lunar Crater Radio Telescope (LCRT) project has been awarded $500,000 to support additional work as it enters Phase II of NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program. While not yet a NASA mission
A new window to see hidden side of magnetized universe
Friday, 07 May 2021 03:35New observations and simulations show that jets of high-energy particles emitted from the central massive black hole in the brightest galaxy in galaxy clusters can be used to map the structure of invisible inter-cluster magnetic fields. These findings provide astronomers with a new tool for investigating previously unexplored aspects of clusters of galaxies. As clusters of galaxies grow
Johns Hopkins Scientists Model Saturn's Interior
Friday, 07 May 2021 03:35New Johns Hopkins University simulations offer an intriguing look into Saturn's interior, suggesting that a thick layer of helium rain influences the planet's magnetic field. The models, published this week in AGU Advances, also indicate that Saturn's interior may feature higher temperatures at the equatorial region, with lower temperatures at the high latitudes at the top of the helium ra
Mysterious hydrogen-free supernova sheds light on stars' violent death throes
Friday, 07 May 2021 03:35A curiously yellow pre-supernova star has caused astrophysicists to re-evaluate what's possible at the deaths of our Universe's most massive stars. The team describe the peculiar star and its resulting supernova in a new study published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. At the end of their lives, cool, yellow stars are typically shrouded in hydrogen, which conceals the
Physicists describe new type of aurora
Friday, 07 May 2021 03:35For millennia, humans in the high latitudes have been enthralled by auroras - the northern and southern lights. Yet even after all that time, it appears the ethereal, dancing ribbons of light above Earth still hold some secrets. In a new study, physicists led by the University of Iowa report a new feature to Earth's atmospheric light show. Examining video taken nearly two decades ago, the
NASA's On-orbit Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing 1 Mission Ready for Spacecraft Build
Friday, 07 May 2021 03:35NASA is one step closer to robotically refueling a satellite and demonstrating in-space assembly and manufacturing thanks to the completion of an important milestone. In April 2021, NASA and Maxar Technologies successfully completed the On-orbit Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing 1 (OSAM-1) mission spacecraft accommodation Critical Design Review (CDR). This milestone demonstrates that
US not planning to shoot down errant Chinese rocket: defense chief
Friday, 07 May 2021 03:35The US military has no plans to shoot down an out -of-control Chinese rocket now hurtling towards Earth, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Thursday. "We have the capability to do a lot of things, but we don't have a plan to shoot it down as we speak," Austin told journalists. Pentagon experts expect the body of the Long March 5B rocket, which fell out of orbit after separating from Bei