Russia launches UK telecom satellites into space
Thursday, 17 December 2020 14:57A Soyuz rocket blasted off from the Vostochny cosmodrome in Russia's Far East on Friday carrying 36 UK telecommunications and internet satellites, the Roscosmos space agency said.
The launch was the first and only one to take place from the cosmodrome this year, Roscosmos told AFP.
The rocket took off at 1226 GMT, Roscosmos said, carrying satellites made by the British-based company OneWeb.
Originally planned for April, the launch was delayed after OneWeb collapsed and was forced to declare bankruptcy.
Last month, the UK government and Indian telecommunications giant Bharti took control of the company, investing $500 million a piece.
The London-headquartered company is working to complete the construction of a constellation of low earth orbit satellites providing enhanced broadband and other services to countries around the world.
OneWeb's first six satellites were launched by a Russian-made Soyuz rocket from the space centre in Kourou in French Guiana in February 2019.
The company launched 34 more in February this year from the Baikanour launch site in Kazakhstan, then another 34 in March.
OneWeb plans for its global commercial internet service to be operational by 2022, supported by some 650 satellites.
"Today's launch will be the first fully commercial spacecraft launch from the Vostochny cosmodrome," Roscosmos said.
Week in images: 14 - 18 December 2020
Thursday, 17 December 2020 14:43
Week in images: 14 - 18 December 2020
Discover our week through the lens
Giant A-68A iceberg loses chunk of ice
Thursday, 17 December 2020 14:10
A large block of ice has broken off the northern tip of the A-68A iceberg as seen in new images captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission.
NASA moves forward with campaign to return Mars samples to Earth
Thursday, 17 December 2020 13:30
NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) are moving to the next phase in a campaign to deepen understanding of whether life ever existed on Mars and, in turn, better understand the origins of life on Earth.
NASA has approved the Mars Sample Return (MSR) multi-mission effort to advance to Phase A, preparing to bring the first pristine samples from Mars back to Earth. During this phase, the program will mature critical technologies and make critical design decisions, as well as assess industry partnerships.
The first endeavor of this campaign is in progress. NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover launched in July and is set to land on the Red Planet Feb. 18, 2021. The car-size rover will search for signs of ancient microbial life. Using a coring drill at the end of its robotic arm, Perseverance has the capability to gather samples of Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust), and hermetically seal them in collection tubes.
Juno spacecraft updates quarter-century Jupiter mystery
Thursday, 17 December 2020 13:30
Three things NASA learned from Mars InSight
Thursday, 17 December 2020 12:27
NASA's InSight spacecraft touched down Nov. 26, 2018, on Mars to study the planet's deep interior. A little more than one Martian year later, the stationary lander has detected more than 480 quakes and collected the most comprehensive weather data of any surface mission sent to Mars. InSight's probe, which has struggled to dig underground to take the planet's temperature, has made progress, too.
There was a time when the surfaces of Mars and Earth were very similar. Both were warm, wet, and shrouded in thick atmospheres. But 3 or 4 billion years ago, these two worlds took different paths. The mission of InSight (short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) has been to help scientists to compare Earth to its rusty sibling. Studying what the depths of Mars is made of, how that material is layered, and how quickly heat seeps out of it could help scientists better understand how a planet's starting materials make it more or less likely to support life.
China rolls out Long March 8 rocket for weekend test flight
Thursday, 17 December 2020 11:44
HELSINKI — China has rolled out a Long March 8 to the pad for the first launch of a rocket that will later be adapted for vertical landing and reuse.
Investigation confirms improperly connected cables caused Vega launch failure
Thursday, 17 December 2020 11:38
WASHINGTON — An independent investigation of a Vega launch failure in November confirmed that misconnected cables in the rocket’s upper stage doomed the mission and made recommendations to allow a return to flight in early 2021.
The European Space Agency announced Dec.
New satellite propulsion test facility to propel UK into new space age
Thursday, 17 December 2020 09:58
A new gold standard national rocket test facility will soon open its doors, the Science Minister Amanda Solloway has announced 18 December.
The new centre will allow UK companies and academics to fire up and test state-of-the-art space propulsion engines at up to 1.5kN in high-altitude vacuum, an equivalent test altitude of 140,000ft. It will cement the international reputation of the West SpaceX aborts launch attempt of U.S. government spy satellite
Thursday, 17 December 2020 09:58
SpaceX on Thursday postponed the company's second spy satellite mission for the U.S. government due to a slightly high pressure reading in an upper stage liquid oxygen tank on the Falcon 9 rocket.
The countdown stopped at 1 minute, 53 seconds before the planned 9:45 a.m. EST liftoff from Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. SpaceX said it plans another attempt Friday morning. Major upgrade to Fermilab accelerator complex gets green light
Thursday, 17 December 2020 09:58
The U.S. Department of Energy has formally approved the scope, schedule and cost of the PIP-II project at DOE's Fermilab.
The approval, known as Critical Decision 2 or CD-2, is an endorsement of Fermilab's detailed, formal plan for building the PIP-II accelerator, a high-power, superconducting machine that will become the heart of the laboratory accelerator complex.
PIP-II, the only New type of atomic clock keeps time even more precisely
Thursday, 17 December 2020 09:58
Atomic clocks are the most precise timekeepers in the world. These exquisite instruments use lasers to measure the vibrations of atoms, which oscillate at a constant frequency, like many microscopic pendulums swinging in sync. The best atomic clocks in the world keep time with such precision that, if they had been running since the beginning of the universe, they would only be off by about half Not so fast!: controlling the speed of light bullets
Thursday, 17 December 2020 09:58
Though it sounds like something straight out of science fiction, controlling the speed of light has in fact been a long-standing challenge for physicists. In a study recently published in Communications Physics, researchers from Osaka University generated light bullets with highly controllable velocities.
According to Albert Einstein's principle of relativity, the speed of light is constan Turksat 5A satellite to 'secure' Turkey's orbital rights
Thursday, 17 December 2020 09:58
Turksat 5A, Turkey's new communications satellite that is expected to be launched in the near future, will secure the country's orbital rights for the long term, Jean-Marc Nasr, the head of space systems at Airbus Defence and Space, said on Monday.
"Turksat 5A will secure the orbital rights of Turkey," Nasr told the agency.
According to the Airbus official, the latest-generation sate 'Chaotic' way to create insectlike gaits for robots
Thursday, 17 December 2020 09:58
Researchers in Japan and Italy are embracing chaos and nonlinear physics to create insectlike gaits for tiny robots - complete with a locomotion controller to provide a brain-machine interface.
Biology and physics are permeated by universal phenomena fundamentally grounded in nonlinear physics, and it inspired the researchers' work.
In the journal Chaos, from AIP Publishing, the grou