Philadelphia PA (SPX) Nov 23, 2021
It's a tempting thought: With climate change so difficult to manage and nations unwilling to take decisive action, what if we could mitigate its effects by setting up a kind of chemical umbrella - a layer of sulfuric acid in the upper atmosphere that could reflect the sun's radiation and cool the Earth? According to a new study in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, a collaborati

Beijing (XNA) Nov 24, 2021
China launched a high-resolution Earth-observation satellite from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Northwest China on Tuesday to improve its ocean surveillance capability. The Gaofen 3-02 satellite was launched by a Long March 4C carrier rocket at 7:45 am and entered a sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 755 kilometers, the China National Space Administration said. The sate

Pasadena CA (JPL) Nov 24, 2021
A plane has a pilot. A bus has a driver. A train has a conductor. But who controls a Mars rover? During the last seven years that I have operated spacecraft both in orbit and on the surface of Mars, I've come back again and again to the question of who is most responsible for making a spacecraft go. Is it the ACE who sends the commands to the Deep Space Network (DSN) to be sent to the spac

Paris (ESA) Nov 23, 2021
NASA has selected Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft-und Raumfahrt (DLR) of Cologne, Germany, to provide use of its facility to support long-duration bed rest research. The $49.9 million Bedrest Studies Contract will support a series of bed rest studies at the company's facility in Cologne, Germany. Services also may be required at other NASA centers, contractor or subcontractor locations, or vend

Pasadena CA (JPL) Nov 24, 2021
NASA's Curiosity rover captured a remarkable image from its most recent perch on the side of Mars' Mount Sharp. The mission team was so inspired by the beauty of the landscape, they combined two versions of the black-and-white images from different times of the day and added colors to create a rare postcard from the Red Planet. Curiosity captures a 360-degree view of its surroundings with

Baltimore MD (SPX) Nov 24, 2021
The Flame Nebula or NGC 2024 is a large star-forming region in the constellation Orion that lies about 1,400 light-years from Earth. Hubble studied this nebula to look for protoplanetary disks, or "proplyds" - disks of gas and dust around stars that may one day form new solar systems. Hubble found four confirmed proplyds and four possible proplyds in the nebula, but the proplyds are being

Washington (AFP) Nov 23, 2021
NASA is preparing to launch a mission to deliberately smash a spacecraft into an asteroid - a test run should humanity ever need to stop a giant space rock from wiping out life on Earth. It may sound like the stuff of science fiction, but the DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) is a real proof-of-concept experiment, blasting off at 10:21 pm Pacific Time Tuesday (0621 GMT Wednesday) aboa

Washington (AFP) Nov 23, 2021
Sixty years after her father's historic flight, she too will cross the final frontier: Laura Shepard Churchley, daughter of the first American in space Alan Shepard, will be one of six passengers on Blue Origin's next flight. Jeff Bezos' space company announced Tuesday its third crewed flight will launch on December 9, from Blue's base in West Texas. Churchley and American television pe

Kourou, French Guiana (SPX) Nov 23, 2021
The launch readiness date for the James Webb Space Telescope is moving to no earlier than Dec. 22 to allow for additional testing of the observatory, following a recent incident that occurred during Webb's launch preparations. The incident occurred during operations at the satellite preparation facility in Kourou, French Guiana, performed under Arianespace overall responsibility. Technicia

Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan (SPX) Nov 22, 2021
Residents of two remote Kazakhstan villages can now benefit from unprecedented Internet speeds via satellite-enabled Wi-Fi, through a network set up for 30 days by the leading global content connectivity solutions provider SES. The demo is implemented in cooperation with the Republican Center for Space Communications (RCSC), a subsidiary of the Ministry of Digital Development, Innovations