Huntsville AL (SPX) Nov 23, 2021
An exhausted star still has some punches to deliver. Astronomers have found that a white dwarf is pummeling a companion object - either a lightweight star or a planet - with incessant blasts of heat and radiation plus a relentless gravitational pull tearing it apart. Most stars, including the Sun, will become "white dwarfs" after they begin to run out of fuel, expand and cool into a red gi

Kourou, French Guiana (SPX) Nov 26, 2021
Engineering teams have completed additional testing confirming NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is ready for flight, and launch preparations are resuming toward Webb's target launch date of Wednesday, Dec. 22, at 7:20 a.m. EST. Additional testing was conducted this week to ensure the observatory's health following an incident that occurred when the release of a clamp band caused a vibrati

Turin, Italy (SPX) Nov 26, 2021
Thales Alenia Space, a joint venture between Thales 67% and Leonardo 33%, has inaugurated a new Friction Stir Welding facility at one of its production sites in Turin, which will double production capacity of pressurized modules, for the production of the future orbiting and surface infrastructures. The only company in Europe to use this type of processing for pressurized habitation module

Wuhan (XNA) Nov 26, 2021
The China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation Limited (CASIC) said that it completed the construction of an intelligent satellite production line and a rocket industrial park in the central Chinese city of Wuhan. Located in the Wuhan National Aerospace Industry Base, both the production line and the industrial park went into operation, said Liu Shiquan, general manager of the CASIC.

Pasadena CA (JPL) Nov 26, 2021
As we head into a long weekend for the Thanksgiving holiday in the US, Curiosity will take advantage of some extra time at the Zechstein drill location to conduct even more science. The team has been busy these past two days planning 6 sols (plus a soliday) on Mars, which will give the rover plenty of work to do while the team takes a break from planning later this week. While most of us w

Umea, Sweden (SPX) Nov 26, 2021
Comets have an environment of plasma which contains a large number of ions with low energies. It is necessary to understand these low-energy ions' properties in order to understand the physical processes occurring around the comet. As low-energy ions are difficult to measure Sofia Bergman devised a new method to analyze measurements of these ions around comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in h

Luxembourg (SPX) Nov 26, 2021
SES, the leader in global content connectivity solutions, announces the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has validated the certification of SES's Phase I accelerated C-band clearing and relocation activities, a critical step to help meet the Commission's objectives to quickly roll out 5G services across the United States. With the help of trusted partners across the U.S., SES h

Chennai, India (IANS) Nov 26, 2021
With speculations and rumours abounding on shifting of its human space mission centre and the headquarters of private sector space regulator Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe), officials of the Indian space agency are worried lot. Serving and retired senior officials of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), speaking on the condition of anonymity, told

Washington (AFP) Nov 24, 2021
A health coach from Antigua and Barbuda has won two tickets worth almost $1 million to be among Virgin Galactic's first space tourists - and plans to take the trip of a lifetime with her teenage daughter. Keisha Schahaff, 44, said she wanted to cross the final frontier with her 17-year-old, a science student living in Britain who dreams of one day working for NASA. Virgin Galactic foun

Pasadena CA (JPL) Nov 23, 2021
Scientists recently added a whopping 301 newly validated exoplanets to the total exoplanet tally. The throng of planets is the latest to join the 4,569 already validated planets orbiting a multitude of distant stars. How did scientists discover such a huge number of planets, seemingly all at once? The answer lies with a new deep neural network called ExoMiner. Deep neural networks are mach