New research sums up sea-level rise
Thursday, 10 February 2022 09:43Sea-level rise is arguably one of the most serious consequences of the climate crisis. While using satellite data to monitor how the height of the sea is changing provides critical evidence for decision-making, satellites are also essential to measuring the individual components, such as seawater temperature and glacier melt, that contribute to the overall rise. Confidence in the accuracy of these separate measures is key. ESA-funded research now confirms that the figures match up.
Introducing ESA Vigil: Earth’s devoted solar defender
Thursday, 10 February 2022 09:00Once known as “Lagrange,” ESA’s upcoming space weather mission needed a new name that would reflect its vital role: helping to protect Earth’s infrastructure, satellites, inhabitants and space explorers from unpredictable but violent solar events like solar flares and ‘coronal mass ejections’.
With 5422 submissions from across Europe and indeed around the world – and after weeks of deliberation, countless spreadsheets, three diverse and expert judges and a lively debate – a new name has been selected for our upcoming space weather mission: ESA Vigil.
Introducing: ESA Vigil
Thursday, 10 February 2022 09:00It’s the first mission of its kind, set to monitor our active and unpredictable Sun and help protect us from its violent outbursts – and it has a new name.
Once known as “Lagrange,” ESA’s upcoming space weather mission needed a new name that would reflect its vital role: helping to protect Earth’s infrastructure, satellites, inhabitants and space explorers from unpredictable but violent solar events like solar flares and ‘coronal mass ejections’.
During the #NameTheMission campaign, 5422 entries were submitted from across Europe and indeed around the world – and after weeks of deliberation, countless spreadsheets, three diverse and
Build or buy. That’s the question for constellation developers.
Thursday, 10 February 2022 05:16Many satellite constellation developers are opting to build their own satellites.
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Increasing production is important for Hypersonics, Defense official says
Thursday, 10 February 2022 00:28The Defense Department is working hard on developing both hypersonic offensive and defensive capabilities. But in the immediate future, one of the most important areas to be developed is increasing the capacity at which such systems can be produced, said Gillian Bussey, director of the Joint Hypersonics Transition Office. "I would say that everything we're doing in terms of the interceptor
Scientists in Britain smash fusion energy record
Thursday, 10 February 2022 00:28Scientists in Britain said Wednesday they have smashed a previous record for generating fusion energy, an achievement hailed a "milestone" on the protracted path towards harnessing a power source considered cheap and clean. Nuclear fusion is the same process that the sun uses to generate heat and proponents believe it could one day help address climate change by providing an abundant, safe a
UCF lands new project to study effect of rain on hypersonic travel
Thursday, 10 February 2022 00:28University of Central Florida researchers are part of a new $1 million project funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to better understand and predict how and why raindrops are affected when they cross a hypersonic shock wave. Hypersonic speeds are those at Mach 5 and higher, or five times greater than the speed of sound. The U.S. is currently working on developing hypersoni
Air Force awards contract for spaceborne weather data
Thursday, 10 February 2022 00:28A Hanscom team recently awarded a $19.3 million contract to support a constellation of high-tech weather satellites capable of observing precipitation and storm structures from space. As part of the agreement, Boston-based meteorological intelligence company Tomorrow.io will provide the Aerospace Management Systems Division, headquartered here, with three-dimensional global weather and ocean dat
Raytheon Intelligence and Space Releases Latest Increment of FORGE Data Framework
Thursday, 10 February 2022 00:28Raytheon Intelligence and Space, a Raytheon Technologies business, released version 9.0 of the Future Operationally Resilient Ground Evolution, or FORGE, Mission Data Processing Application Framework. Release 9.0 of the government-owned framework continues to evolve existing features such as scalability, visualization, cybersecurity hardening, and integration for the Overhead Persistent In
SBIRS GEO-5 operationally accepted after exceeding on-orbit testing expectations
Thursday, 10 February 2022 00:28The fifth Space Based Infrared System Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (SBIRS GEO-5) satellite built by Lockheed Martin, has been operationally accepted by the U.S. Space Force less than a year after being launched into orbit. The early missile warning satellite is a "Go-Fast" success story, completing all on-orbit testing with accelerated analysis, resulting in a 40% improvement over GEO-1 thro
Glaciers are melting faster and with more consequences than expected
Thursday, 10 February 2022 00:28Developments at the South Pole are raising new concerns. A group of smaller glaciers, named Pope, Smith and Kohler, are melting faster than expected. So far, the neighbouring giant glaciers, Thwaites and Pine Island, have been the focus of research because they are extremely fragile and could raise global sea levels by up to 1.2 metres. The German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fur Lu
Operational Optical Data Services for Meteosat Satellites
Thursday, 10 February 2022 00:28Following an open invitation to tender, the technology multinational GMV, European industrial leader in Space Situational Awareness (SSA) and Space Surveillance and Tracking (SST), has been awarded a new contract by the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), located in Darmstadt (Germany) for the provision of Operational Optical Data Services to suppo
The abyssal world: the last terra incognita of the Earth surface
Thursday, 10 February 2022 00:28The deep-ocean floor is the least explored ecosystem on the planet, despite covering more than 60% of the Earth surface. Largely unknown life in abyssal sediments, from benthic animals to microbes, helps to recycle and/or sequester the sinking (in)organic matter originating from pelagic communities that are numerically dominated by microscopic plankton. Benthic ecosystems thus underpin two
A new programming language for high-performance computers
Thursday, 10 February 2022 00:28High-performance computing is needed for an ever-growing number of tasks - such as image processing or various deep learning applications on neural nets - where one must plow through immense piles of data, and do so reasonably quickly, or else it could take ridiculous amounts of time. It's widely believed that, in carrying out operations of this sort, there are unavoidable trade-offs between spe
NASA outlines concerns about Starlink next-generation constellation in FCC letter
Wednesday, 09 February 2022 23:48NASA says that SpaceX’s proposal for a second-generation Starlink constellation with 30,000 satellites could lead to a “significant increase” in potential collisions in low Earth orbit and interfere with the agency’s launches and scientific activities.
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