Virgin Galactic secures land for new astronaut campus and training facility
Thursday, 04 August 2022 11:11
Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: SPCE) has secured land to move forward with a new astronaut campus and training facility in the State of New Mexico, near the Company's commercial operations headquarters.
The land, located in Sierra County, will be home to a new, first of its kind astronaut campus, for exclusive use by Virgin Galactic Future Astronauts and up to three of their guests NASA team troubleshoots asteroid-bound Lucy across the solar system
Thursday, 04 August 2022 11:11
Following the successful launch of NASA's Lucy spacecraft on Oct. 16, 2021, a group of engineers huddled around a long conference table in Titusville, Florida. Lucy was mere hours into its 12-year flight, but an unexpected challenge had surfaced for the first-ever Trojan asteroids mission.
Data indicated that one of Lucy's solar arrays powering the spacecraft's systems - designed to unfurl Through the Pass We Go Sols 3551-3552
Thursday, 04 August 2022 11:11
Curiosity is making its way through the stunning "Paraitepuy Pass," the little canyon that runs between the "Deepdale" and "Bolivar" buttes to our east and west, respectively. The canyon floor is filled with aeolian bedforms, or sand ripples, as wind is likely funneled through the pass, mobilizing sand grains - a lovely modern process, active on Mars today! Today's two-sol plan contains our norm The strength of the strong force
Thursday, 04 August 2022 11:11
Much ado was made about the Higgs boson when this elusive particle was discovered in 2012. Though it was touted as giving ordinary matter mass, interactions with the Higgs field only generate about 1 percent of ordinary mass. The other 99 percent comes from phenomena associated with the strong force, the fundamental force that binds smaller particles called quarks into larger particles called pr The final frontier? Just a slice of Spanish sausage
Thursday, 04 August 2022 10:37
A red ball of spicy fire with luminous patches glowing menacingly against a black background.
This, prominent French scientist Etienne Klein declared, was the latest astonishing picture taken by the James Webb Space Telescope of Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our Sun.
Fellow Twitter users marveled at the details on the picture purportedly taken by the telescope, which has thrilled the world with images of distant galaxies going back to the birth of the universe.
"This level of detail... A new world is revealed every day," he gushed.
But in fact, as Klein later revealed, the picture was not of the intriguing star just over four light-years from the Sun but a far more modest slice of the lip-sizzling Spanish sausage chorizo.
Photo de Proxima du Centaure, l'étoile la plus proche du Soleil, située à 4,2 année-lumière de nous.
Elle a été prise par le JWST.
Ce niveau de détails… Un nouveau monde se dévoile jour après jour.
ULA launches the last SBIRS U.S. Space Force missile warning satellite
Thursday, 04 August 2022 09:49
A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket carrying a U.S. Space Force missile-warning satellite lifted off Aug. 4 at 6:29 a.m. Eastern from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.
ESA testing sensor network for smart city navigation
Thursday, 04 August 2022 07:27
New infrastructure added to ESA’s ESTEC technical centre in the Netherlands is helping to test how tomorrow’s smart cities will operate in practice. The HANSEL system is hosted in ESTEC’s Navigation Laboratory and allows linking to sensors across the site, providing insight into the collective networking and computing needed to get a variety of ‘intelligent elements’ to mesh seamlessly together – what the brain of a future smart city might look like.
Rocket Lab launches classified mission for National Reconnaissance Office
Thursday, 04 August 2022 06:22
A Rocket Lab Electron rocket launched a National Reconnaissance Office mission Aug. 4 at 1:00 a.m. Eastern. The NROL-199 mission lifted off from the company’s Launch Complex-1 at Mahia Peninsula, New Zealand.
First SLS launch remains on schedule for late August
Wednesday, 03 August 2022 21:28
Preparations for the first flight of the Space Launch System remain on track for a liftoff as soon as Aug. 29, NASA officials said Aug. 3.
The post First SLS launch remains on schedule for late August appeared first on SpaceNews.
As reflective satellites fill the skies, students are making sure astronomers can adapt
Wednesday, 03 August 2022 19:57
As satellites crawl across the sky, they reflect light from the sun back down to Earth, especially during the first few hours after sunset and the first few hours before sunrise. As more companies launch networks of satellites into low-Earth orbit, a clear view of the night sky is becoming rarer. Astronomers, in particular, are trying to find ways to adapt.
NASA's PUNCH mission announces rideshare with SPHEREx and new launch date
Wednesday, 03 August 2022 19:18
NASA's Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission will share a ride to space with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Re-ionization, and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) mission. The missions will launch no earlier than April 2025 on a SpaceX Falcon 9.
Team troubleshoots asteroid-bound Lucy spacecraft across millions of miles
Wednesday, 03 August 2022 19:14
Following the successful launch of NASA's Lucy spacecraft on Oct. 16, 2021, a group of engineers huddled around a long conference table in Titusville, Florida. Lucy was mere hours into its 12-year flight, but an unexpected challenge had surfaced for the first-ever Trojan asteroids mission.
Data indicated that one of Lucy's solar arrays powering the spacecraft's systems—designed to unfurl like a hand fan—hadn't fully opened and latched, and the team was figuring out what to do next.
Teams from NASA and Lucy mission partners quickly came together to troubleshoot. On the phone were team members at Lockheed Martin's Mission Support Area outside of Denver, who were in direct contact with the spacecraft.
Lockheed invests in Xona’s GPS-alternative constellation
Wednesday, 03 August 2022 18:01
Startup Xona Space Systems has raised around $15 million for its proposed navigation constellation, including funds from GPS satellite maker Lockheed Martin’s venture capital arm.
The post Lockheed invests in Xona’s GPS-alternative constellation appeared first on SpaceNews.
Co-founder of Texas-based Dude Perfect is set to go to space
Wednesday, 03 August 2022 14:26
The third time really was the charm for Dude Perfect co-founder Coby Cotton.
Cotton and the four other founding members of the Frisco-based sports and entertainment company had their third model rocket competition at the start of July, and Cotton had lost the previous two. The only thing on the line during those competitions was a golden rocket trophy. This time, the prize was a trip to space.
Cotton's rocket soared 7,412 feet in the air, past all of the other competitors' rockets but nowhere near as high as he will be aboard the next Blue Origin rocket on his way to space. He will be a crew member on New Shepard's 22nd flight, which blasts off Thursday.
Cotton started the Dude Perfect YouTube channel with his twin brother and three of their college friends in 2009, after a video of them doing backyard basketball trick shots went viral. It has since grown to become the fourth-biggest sports channel on YouTube.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000, with the mission of making it possible for millions of people to live and work in space.
ESA ends efforts to recover Sentinel-1B
Wednesday, 03 August 2022 14:05
The European Space Agency is ending efforts to restore operations of the Sentinel-1B radar imaging satellite that malfunctioned more than half a year ago and will instead move up the launch of a replacement.