Copernical Team
Richard Branson's flight sparks new optimism in New Mexico
With Virgin Galactic making its highest profile test flight to date with boss Richard Branson aboard, it's only a matter of time before paying customers get their chance and New Mexico realizes a dream that has been decades in the making.
Former Gov. Bill Richardson is among those who have been watching the progress of the space tourism company, ever since he and his team recruited the British billionaire to New Mexico.
Using AI to discover landing and exploration sites on the moon
A moon-scanning method that can automatically classify important lunar features from telescope images could significantly improve the efficiency of selecting sites for exploration.
There is more than meets the eye to picking a landing or exploration site on the moon. The visible area of the lunar surface is larger than Russia and is pockmarked by thousands of craters and crisscrossed by canyon-like rilles. The choice of future landing and exploration sites may come down to the most promising prospective locations for construction, minerals or potential energy resources. However, scanning by eye across such a large area, looking for features perhaps a few hundred meters across, is laborious and often inaccurate, which makes it difficult to pick optimal areas for exploration.
Siyuan Chen, Xin Gao and Shuyu Sun, along with colleagues from The Chinese University of Hong Kong, have now applied machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to automate the identification of prospective lunar landing and exploration areas.
Israel's SpaceIL secures funds for new lunar mission
Party time: Champagne and celebrities mark Branson's space flight
Champagne flowed, guests cheered and Grammy-nominated singer Khalid debuted a new single: British billionaire Richard Branson threw himself a party in the desert to mark his successful first flight into space.
The eccentric septuagenarian founder of Virgin Galactic arrived before dawn at Spaceport America, built in large part at his initiative, in the US state of New Mexico.
The sun rose on the building's futuristic glass facade, located in a region that boasts 340 days of good weather per year.
A small crowd of invited guests, baking under the hot sun, cheered as the space crew climbed into a black SUV and headed for the rocket, which sat at the end of a 3.6 kilometer (2.2 miles) track.
What's a suborbital flight? An aerospace engineer explains
"Suborbital" is a term you'll be hearing a lot as Sir Richard Branson flies aboard Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity winged spaceship and Jeff Bezos flies aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard vehicle to touch the boundary of space and experience a few minutes of weightlessness.
But what exactly is "suborbital?" Simply put, it means that while these vehicles will cross the ill-defined boundary of space, they will not be going fast enough to stay in space once they get there.
If a spacecraft—or anything else, for that matter—reaches a speed of 17,500 mph (28,000 km/h) or more, instead of falling back to the ground, it will continuously fall around the Earth. That continuous falling is what it means to be in orbit and is how satellites and the Moon stay above Earth.
Last Tianlian I satellite placed in orbit
China launched the last satellite in its Tianlian I relay spacecraft series late on Tuesday night, which also marked the finale of the country's DFH-3 satellite platform.
A Long March 3C carrier rocket blasted off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan province at 11:52 pm and then placed the Tianlian I-05 satellite into a geostationary orbit, said China Aerospace Science and OSU drone expertise is supporting the exploration of Earth and the Final Frontier
As a descendent of pioneers who crossed the Plains 150 years ago to establish a new life in what was then referred to as The Oklahoma Territory, it's ironic that the work that I and others in the State of Oklahoma are doing today related to Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) has placed the State back at the center of what can best be described as the new "wild west of aviation."
Although many S Moscow not excluding dialogue with US on Russia's latest weapons systems
Moscow is not ruling out a dialogue with the United States on Russia's latest weapons systems if it also includes talks on American prospective hypersonic weapons and other issues, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said.
"I do not know, but I think that you can't do it without talking about them [Russian weapons systems]. But equally, Americans must proceed from the fact that we will Blackjack program deploys two Mandrake 2 satellites
DARPA successfully deployed two satellites on June 30 as part of the SpaceX Transporter 2 launch. Both Mandrake 2 spacecraft, Able and Baker, are functioning well and progressing through checkout and commissioning.
Conceived as an early risk-reduction flight for DARPA's Blackjack program, the Mandrake 2 mission will prove out advanced laser communications technologies for a broad governmen Billionaire Richard Branson reaches space in his own ship
Swashbuckling entrepreneur Richard Branson hurtled into space aboard his own winged rocket ship Sunday in his boldest adventure yet, beating out fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos.
The nearly 71-year-old Branson and five crewmates from his Virgin Galactic space tourism company reached an altitude of about 53 miles (88 kilometers) over the New Mexico desert—enough to experience three to four minutes of weightlessness and see the curvature of the Earth—and then safely glided home to a runway landing.