Washington DC (SPX) Feb 26, 2021
The investigation of Electron-Positron-Ion (EPI) plasma - a fully ionised gas of electrons and positrons that includes astrophysical plasmas like solar winds - has attracted a great deal of attention over the last twenty years. A new study published in EPJ D by Garston Tiofack, Faculty of Sciences, University of Marousa, Cameroon, and colleagues, assesses the dynamics of positron acoustic

La Laguna, Spain (SPX) Feb 26, 2021
A study, led by researchers at the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC) and carried out with OSIRIS, an instrument on the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC), has found the most densely populated galaxy cluster in formation in the primitive universe. The researchers predict that this structure, which is at a distance of 12.5 billion light years from us, will have evolved becoming a cluste

WASHINGTON — Astra has won a NASA contract to launch a small constellation of Earth science cubesats, while General Atomics selected Rocket Lab for the launch of a small satellite with a NOAA hosted payload.

NASA announced Feb.

WASHINGTON — Lockheed Martin is redesigning the bus used for Global Positioning System satellites so they can be upgraded with new hardware on orbit, a company executive said Feb. 25.

Eric Brown, senior director of military space mission strategy at Lockheed Martin, said this is significant because the thinking today is that “once something was on orbit you were done with it.

Week in images: 22 - 26 February 2021

Discover our week through the lens

Washington DC (UPI) Feb 25, 2021
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' space company, Blue Origin, has delayed the first launch of its big New Glenn rocket until late 2022 because, the company said, it failed to win large government contracts recently. The company had planned to launch by this year, but lost billions of dollars in U.S. Space Force business to SpaceX and United Launch Alliance in an August decision by the governme

Philadelphia PA (SPX) Feb 26, 2021
Litter is not only a problem on Earth. According to NASA, there are currently millions of pieces of space junk in the range of altitudes from 200 to 2,000 kilometers above the Earth's surface, which is known as low Earth orbit (LEO). Most of the junk is comprised of objects created by humans, like pieces of old spacecraft or defunct satellites. This space debris can reach speeds of up to 18,000

Boston MA (SPX) Feb 24, 2021
"That was your warmup. Now we're really in the thick of it." Daniel Korsun '20 is reflecting on his four years of undergraduate preparation and research at MIT as he enters "the thick" of graduate study at the Institute's Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC). The nuclear science and engineering student's "warmup" included enough fusion research on the SPARC tokamak to establish him as part of

Jiuquan, China (XNA) Feb 24, 2021
The third group of China's Yaogan 31 remote sensing satellites were sent into space from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Northwest China at 10:22 am (Beijing Time) Wednesday. The satellites were carried by a Long March 4C rocket. It was the 361st flight mission of the Long March carrier rocket series, the launch center said. Having entered their planned orbits, the satellites

Kirtland AFB NM (AFRL) Feb 24, 2021
The Air Force Research Laboratory Self-Protect High Energy Laser Demonstrator (SHiELD) Advanced Technology Demonstration (ATD) Program is scheduled to receive the first major assembly of its three main subsystems later this month, with the remaining two subsystems set to be delivered later this year. The SHiELD program is developing a directed energy laser system that will reside in an air