Copernical Team
Image: Underwater astronaut training
Prepping for a spacewalk typically means diving underwater to rehearse and fine-tune operations.
In 2016, ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst performed such an underwater rehearsal for the ColKa high speed radio, the brown box imaged above, that will be installed this month on the International Space Station.
NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins and Victor Glover will integrate the small fridge-sized device outside the European Columbus module during a spacewalk scheduled this year. ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen will be at NASA's mission control directing the spacewalkers as Capcom. The Columbus Ka-band terminal, nicknamed "ColKa," will enable faster communication with Europe.
Orbiting the planet every 90 minutes means the Space Station is constantly making and breaking short links with ground stations on Earth as it passes over them at a height of 400 km.
With Colka, a European telecommunications satellite in geostationary orbit can pick up data sent from the Columbus module. This satellite is part of the European Data Relay System and will be able to directly relay the signals from Columbus to European soil via a ground station in Harwell, in the U.K.
Spain’s chilly blanket
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The heavy snowfall that hit Spain a few days ago still lies heavy across much of the country as this Copernicus Sentinel-3 satellite image shows. Muscles, metals, bubbles and rotifers – a month of European science in space
The month of December comes with holidays for many, but for the International Space Station and mission controls around the world, science never rests.
DNI Ratcliffe welcomes US Space Force as 18th Intelligence Community Member
Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe has welcomed the U.S. Space Force (USSF) as the 18th member of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC).
During an afternoon ceremony, Ratcliffe and Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. "Jay" Raymond announced the designation of the intelligence element of the U.S. Space Force as a member of the IC.
"This accession reaffirms our commitme Scientists see competition of magnetic orders from 2D sheets of atoms
For the first time, scientists have observed competition between magnetic orders from coupled sheets of atoms. The observations, described Wednesday in the journal Nature, promise new insights into the quantum qualities of two-dimensional materials.
Ever since a pair of British researchers were awarded the Nobel Prize in 2010 for the discovery of graphene, material scientists, electrica Russia starts mass vaccinations in cosmonaut centre
Russia's cosmonaut training centre said Tuesday it has begun vaccinating employees against the coronavirus ahead of future space missions.
The press service of the Yuri Gagarin Training Centre told AFP that around 40 of its nearly 1,500 employees had received the first dose of Russia's homemade coronavirus vaccine Sputnik V.
Named after famous Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first pe France to Invest $121.5Mln in Space Projects Over Next 2 Years, Macron Says
French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday pointed to the excessive competition in the European space industry and called for larger investments, noting that Paris would allocate 100 million euros ($121.5 million) for space projects in the next two years.
"In terms of [economic] recovery, we have decided to invest 100 million euros in space, which will cover innovations related to carrier New Horizons spacecraft answers question: how dark is space
How dark is the sky, and what does that tell us about the number of galaxies in the visible universe? Astronomers can estimate the total number of galaxies by counting everything visible in a Hubble deep field and then multiplying them by the total area of the sky. But other galaxies are too faint and distant to directly detect. Yet while we can't count them, their light suffuses space with a fe Why do some regions on the dwarf planet Ceres appear blue
This month marks the 220th anniversary of the discovery of the first asteroid. During the night of 1-2 January 1801, Giuseppe Piazzi, the director of Palermo Astronomical Observatory, noticed a 'star' on the shoulder of the bull-shaped constellation, Taurus. But the position of the star was changing each night. Piazzi had discovered Ceres, the largest body in the vast space between the planets M NASA, Japan formalize Gateway Partnership for Artemis Program
NASA and the Government of Japan have finalized an agreement for the lunar Gateway, an orbiting outpost that commercial and international partners will build together. This agreement strengthens the broad effort by the United States to engage international partners in sustainable lunar exploration as part of the Artemis program and to demonstrate the technologies needed for human missions to Mar