Falcon 9 rocket launches 54 Starlink satellites
Thursday, 29 December 2022 09:33
A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 54 Starlink Internet satellites launched from Florida on Wednesday as part of a mission to begin populating a new orbital shell authorized by federal regulators.
The rocket launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 4:34 a.m. The mission was SpaceX's 60th of the year, nearly double the total from last year. One more launch is scheduled for the end of Researchers discover solar wind-derived water in lunar soils
Thursday, 29 December 2022 09:33
Due to its crucial importance in future space exploration, the abundance, distribution and origin of lunar surface water have received a lot of attention recently.
A joint research team from the National Space Science Center (NSSC) and the Institute of Geology and Geophysics (IGG), both affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), have discovered that the Chang'e-5 lunar soil gra Chinese commercial space company to launch stackable satellites
Thursday, 29 December 2022 09:33
China's private company GalaxySpace is accelerating the research and development of flat-panel stackable satellites, for rapid construction of a satellite internet constellation.
GalaxySpace said the design enables dozens of satellites to be stacked on top of each other like tablet personal computers and be launched at the same time on a single rocket. It can greatly improve the use effici SPIDER launches from Antarctica
Thursday, 29 December 2022 09:33
A team of scientists including physicist Johanna Nagy at Washington University in St. Louis successfully launched a balloon-borne experiment studying the early universe on Dec. 21. The instrument, called SPIDER, was carried aloft by a scientific balloon from its launch pad in Antarctica.
Nagy, an assistant professor of physics in Arts and Sciences, is one of a team of scientists who will u Precise FAST observations reveal circular polarization in active repeating fast radio bursts
Thursday, 29 December 2022 09:33
A research team led by Prof. LI Di from the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) has revealed circular polarization in active repeating fast radio bursts based on precise observations of the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST).
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are the most luminous radio flashes in the universe. The estimated equivalent e Op-ed | Promoting, protecting and defending freedom’s expansion in space
Wednesday, 28 December 2022 21:19
It is imperative for the U.S. government and commercial space ventures to enhance collaboration and coordination to secure the high frontier for freedom’s sake.
The post Op-ed | Promoting, protecting and defending freedom’s expansion in space appeared first on SpaceNews.
Thales Alenia Space studying reusable spacecraft for in-orbit manufacturing
Wednesday, 28 December 2022 13:29
Uncrewed rather than crewed spacecraft will be key to realizing an emerging in-orbit manufacturing industry, according to a European venture that has tasked Thales Alenia Space to develop a vehicle called REV1 for missions starting in late 2025.
NASA made sole-source award for space station spacesuit
Wednesday, 28 December 2022 12:30
A task order Collins Aerospace received to develop a new spacesuit for the International Space Station was awarded on a sole-source basis, a move NASA says was intended to preserve competition for later phases of the program.
Space junk bill passes Senate unanimously
Wednesday, 28 December 2022 10:22
U.S. Senator John Hickenlooper applauded Senate passage of his Orbital Sustainability (ORBITS) Act, a bipartisan bill to establish a first-of-its-kind demonstration program to reduce the amount of space junk in orbit. The bill passed the Senate unanimously.
"From satellite communications to rockets carrying humans into deep space, space debris is a massive threat to space operations," said Musk says nearly 100 Starlinks 'active' in Iran
Wednesday, 28 December 2022 10:22
Nearly 100 Starlink internet terminals are currently operating in Iran, SpaceX chief Elon Musk said Monday.
The tycoon had promised to bring the satellite internet network to the country in September as Iranian authorities imposed increasingly severe access restrictions, in a move activists called a campaign to limit information about protests that had broken out nationwide.
"Approachi NASA, Russian space agency evaluate need for space station rescue mission
Wednesday, 28 December 2022 10:22
NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos are evaluating if they will need to mount a rescue mission to the International Space Station after discovering a coolant leak from the Russian Soyuz spacecraft currently docked at the station.
The leaking spacecraft, designated Soyuz MS-22, carried U.S. astronaut Frank Rubio, along with cosmonauts Dmitri Petelin and Sergey Prokopyev to the In NASA, Alaska researchers to scan asteroid with radio waves
Wednesday, 28 December 2022 10:22
Researchers are preparing for a potentially "catastrophic" close encounter with an asteroid in 2029 by scanning an asteroid with radio waves on Tuesday.
NASA is teaming with scientists from the University of Alaska Fairbanks' Geophysical Institute to send about 9.6 million radio waves to 2010 XC15, an asteroid that will pass by about twice the distance from Earth to the Moon.
The The world's largest turbulence simulation unmasks the flow of energy in astrophysical plasmas
Wednesday, 28 December 2022 10:22
Researchers have uncovered a previously hidden heating process that helps explain how the atmosphere that surrounds the Sun called the "solar corona" can be vastly hotter than the solar surface that emits it.
The discovery at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) could improve tackling a range of astrophysical puzzles such as star formation, the o NASA makes asteroid defense a priority, moving its NEO surveyor mission into the development phase
Tuesday, 27 December 2022 16:35
There's an old adage in the engineering field—what gets funded gets built. So it's sure to be a happy time over at the Planetary Society, as NEO Surveyor, the project the organization has primarily supported over the past few years, has made it through NASA's grueling budgetary process to reach the "development" stage, with an eye for a launch of the system in 2028.
NEO Surveyor is, as the name implies, a satellite specifically designed to survey for objects near the Earth (NEO). One of its primary contributions will be to look for asteroids and other small bodies that are potentially on an eventual collision course with Earth but are invisible to typical NEO survey missions because of their location in the solar system.
Typically, their signals are just background noise against the overwhelming signal from the sun. But NEO Surveyor will be able to detect individual asteroid heat signatures, allowing it to isolate potentially dangerous asteroids using this novel technique.
Is mining in space socially acceptable?
Tuesday, 27 December 2022 16:31
Traditional mining has been subject to a negative stigma for some time. People, especially in developed countries, have a relatively negative view of this necessary economic activity. Primarily that is due to its environmental impacts—greenhouse gas emissions and habitat destruction are some of the effects that give the industry its negative image.
Mining in space is an entirely different proposition—any greenhouse gases emitted on the moon or asteroids are inconsequential, and there is no habitat to speak of on these barren rocks. So what is the general public's opinion on mining in space? A paper published in Sustainability by a group of researchers in Australia, one of the countries most impacted by the effects of terrestrial mining, now gives us an answer.
Strangely, as the paper points out, no one had previously studied this particular aspect of space resources. Despite the general media interest in ventures such as Planetary Resources and the success of missions such as Hayabusa-2, no one had attempted to understand how the general public felt about space mining.