
Copernical Team
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Reinventing the clock: NASA's new tech for space timekeeping

Here on Earth, it might not matter if your wristwatch runs a few seconds slow. But crucial spacecraft functions need accuracy down to one billionth of a second or less. Navigating with GPS, for example, relies on precise timing signals from satellites to pinpoint locations. Three teams at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, are at work to push timekeeping for space exploration to new levels of precision.
- One team develops highly precise quantum clock synchronization techniques to aid essential spacecraft communication and navigation.
- Another Goddard team is working to employ the technique of clock synchronization in space-based platforms to enable telescopes to function as one enormous observatory.
- The third team is developing an atomic clock for spacecraft based on strontium, a metallic chemical element, to enable scientific observations not possible with current technology.
There are plenty of uses for powerful lasers in space. But where should we put them?

SpaceX pushes booster recovery limits with satellite launch

SpaceX pushed one of its most-used boosters to its limits with a launch Tuesday evening from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
A Falcon 9 rocket using a booster for the 22nd time managed a successful recovery landing even though it was used to fly its payload, a pair of the European Commission's Galileo L13 satellites, to a medium-Earth orbit. The last time SpaceX flew such a mission, it didn't even try to recover the booster because it required more propellant than a low-Earth orbit mission.
Liftoff came at 6:50 p.m. Eastern time from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station's Space Launch Complex 40, and the booster stuck the landing on the droneship Just Read the Instructions a little more than eight minutes later.
SpaceX had to expend a booster, meaning let it fall back into the Atlantic, for the Galileo L12 mission back in April so SpaceX could provide the performance needed to get the payload to orbit.
"Data from that mission informed subtle design and operational changes, including mass reductions and trajectory adjustments, that will allow us to safely recover and reuse this booster," SpaceX posted on its website ahead of the new mission.