For the first time ever recorded, in the late summer of 2021, rain fell on the high central region of the Greenland ice sheet. This extraordinary event was followed by the surface snow and ice melting rapidly. Researchers now understand exactly what went on in those fateful summer days and what we can learn from it.

For decades now Earth observation satellites have been monitoring our ever-changing home planet; the next step is to enable them to recognise what they see. The latest public challenge for the machine learning community from ESA’s Advanced Concepts Team is to train satellite software to identify features within the images it acquires – with the winning team getting the unique opportunity to load their solution to ESA's OPS-SAT nanosatellite and test it in orbit.

Zurich, Switzerland (SPX) May 25, 2022
Before the Earth and other planets formed, the young sun was still surrounded by cosmic gas and dust. Over the millennia, rock fragments of various sizes formed from the dust. Many of these became building blocks for the later planets. Others did not become part of a planet and still orbit the sun today, for example as asteroids in the asteroid belt. Researchers from ETH Zurich and the N

Baltimore MD (SPX) May 25, 2022
As NASA's James Webb Space Telescope moves through the final phases of commissioning its science instruments, we have also begun working on technical operations of the observatory. While the telescope moves through space, it will constantly find distant stars and galaxies and point at them with extreme precision to acquire images and spectra. However, we also plan to observe planets and their sa

Chapel Hill NC (SPX) May 25, 2022
A team led by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has found a previously overlooked treasure trove of massive black holes in dwarf galaxies. The newly discovered black holes offer a glimpse into the life story of the supermassive black hole at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy. As a giant spiral galaxy, the Milky Way is believed to have been built up from me

Berkeley CA (SPX) May 25, 2022
Artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms trained on real astronomical observations now outperform astronomers in sifting through massive amounts of data to find new exploding stars, identify new types of galaxies and detect the mergers of massive stars, accelerating the rate of new discovery in the world's oldest science. But AI, also called machine learning, can reveal something deeper, Un

Tokyo, Japan (SPX) May 23, 2022
President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida met in Tokyo Monday where they announced progress on collaboration for human and robotic lunar missions. They confirmed their commitment to include a Japanese astronaut aboard the lunar Gateway outpost and their shared ambition to see a future Japanese astronaut land on the Moon as part of NASA's Artemis program. "In recent year

Beijing (XNA) May 25, 2022
Chinese researchers have commenced breeding experiments on 12,000 seeds that were bred inside the Shenzhou-13 crewed spaceship in space for six months. The seeds, including alfalfa, oats and fungi, were selected by multiple research institutions last year. They were brought back to Earth by the Shenzhou-13 on April 16. Space breeding refers to the process of exposing seeds to cosmic

Burlington VT (SPX) May 25, 2022
With a new major propulsion contract signed to support Space Forge's in-space manufacturing mission, Benchmark Space Systems has announced it has opened a manufacturing and testing facility Northwest of London to build a regional team and its Starling and Halcyon propulsion systems to help empower the flourishing European space sector. The agreement brings together two of the fastest growi

Friedrichshafen, Germany (SPX) May 25, 2022
The Copernicus Polar Ice and Snow Topography Altimetry mission CRISTAL is clearly on track. Following an intensive review process the European Space Agency ESA has confirmed that the preliminary design of the satellite meets all system requirements. CRISTAL will carry an advanced multi-frequency altimeter that will measure sea ice thickness and ice sheet elevations - key climate change ind