Copernical Team
NASA's Parker Space Probe becomes 1st spacecraft to 'touch' the sun
Three years after it was launched, NASA's Parker Solar Probe has become the first spacecraft in history to "touch" the sun, officials said.
NASA said the probe flew through the sun's upper atmosphere, the corona, and took some particle samples. The agency called it a "monumental" moment and a "giant leap for solar science."
Because it's closer to the sun than any man-made craft h Discovery of split photon provides a new way to see light
Nearly a century after Italian physicist Ettore Majorana laid the groundwork for the discovery that electrons could be divided into halves, researchers predict that split photons may also exist, according to a study from Dartmouth and SUNY Polytechnic Institute researchers.
The finding that the building blocks of light can exist in a previously-unimaginable split form advances the fundamen Webb space telescope launch delayed: NASA
The launch of the James Webb space telescope scheduled for December 22 won't take place before December 24, NASA announced on Wednesday.
The NASA project, launched in 1989, was originally expected to deploy in the early 2000s.
But multiple problems forced delays and a tripling of the telescope's original budget with a final price tag of nearly 10 billion dollars (8.8 billion euros). Life arose on hydrogen energy
How did the first chemical reactions get started at the origin of life and what was their source of energy? Researchers at the Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf (HHU) have reconstructed the metabolism of the last universal common ancestor, LUCA. They found that almost all chemical steps used by primordial life to piece together the molecular building blocks of cells are energy releasing react Einstein wins again
An international team of researchers from ten countries led by Michael Kramer from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, has conducted a 16-year long experiment to challenge Einstein's theory of general relativity with some of the most rigorous tests yet. Their study of a unique pair of extreme stars, so called pulsars, involved seven radio telescopes across the globe an Rock composition determines how deadly a meteorite impact is
A new University of Liverpool study has found that the minerology of the rocks that a meteorite hits, rather than the size of the impact, determines how deadly an impact it will have.
The earth has been bombarded by meteorites throughout its long history. Meteorite impacts generate atmospheric dust and cover the Earth's surface with debris and have long been considered as a trigger of mass Mars helicopter Ingenuity ready to fly again as radio link is restored
NASA has regained its radio link with the Mars helicopter Ingenuity and plans its 18th flight on the Red Planet as early as Wednesday, the agency announced.
NASA had lost radio contact - except for very brief transmissions - after Ingenuity's Flight 17 on Dec. 5. Hills between the helicopter and the Perseverance rover blocked the link.
But the Mars helicopter's team said in a p ESA contract to advance Vega-C competitiveness
ESA’s Vega-C launch vehicle will fly in the second quarter of 2022 offering more performance to all orbits and extended mission flexibility at a similar cost to the current Vega. A new contract aims to widen these mission capabilities to capture new opportunities and satisfy emerging market needs to 2027.
NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter reaches a total of 30 minutes aloft
The 17th flight of NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter on Dec. 5 pushed the total flight time past the 30-minute mark. The 117-second sortie brought history's first aircraft to operate from the surface of another world closer to its original airfield, "Wright Brothers Field," where it will await the arrival of the agency's Perseverance Mars rover, currently exploring "South Séítah" region of Mars's Jezero Crater.
Cracking the mystery of nitrogen ice dynamics on Pluto
Sputnik Planitia, a basin on the surface of Pluto filled with nitrogen ice, displays an astonishing pattern of flat polygons separated by narrow troughs. This feature is a sign of thermal convection within the icy mass that constantly renews its surface. Until now the driver of this process was a riddle.
However, in their study published in Nature on 15 December 2021, researchers from the CNRS, ENS de Lyon, and the University of Exeter unveil the mystery behind the formation of these structures. Despite the low level of solar radiation, the nitrogen ice here is regularly sublimated, i.e., transformed directly into gas without first becoming a liquid.
This sublimation results in local cooling that causes movements in the ice layer on the scale of 100,000 years, which is comparable to the speed of tectonic plate motion on Earth.