UAE's 'Hope' probe enters Mars orbit in first for Arab world
Monday, 08 February 2021 18:18
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The United Arab Emirates' "Hope" probe on Monday successfully entered Mars' orbit, making history as the Arab world's first interplanetary mission.
The probe is designed to reveal the secrets of Martian weather, but the UAE also wants it to serve as an inspiration for the region's youth.
"To the people of the UAE, to the Arab and Muslim nations, we announce the succesful arrival to Mars' orbit. Praise be to God," said Omran Sharaf, the mission's project manager.
Super-Earth atmospheres probed at Sandia's Z machine
Monday, 08 February 2021 14:42 Write a comment
The huge forces generated by the Z machine at Sandia National Laboratories are being used to replicate the gravitational pressures on so-called "super-Earths" to determine which might maintain atmospheres that could support life.
Astronomers believe that super-Earths—collections of rocks up to eight times larger than Earth—exist in the millions in our galaxy.
Sentinel-6 passes in-orbit tests with flying colors
Monday, 08 February 2021 14:37
Keeping it fluid
Monday, 08 February 2021 14:31 Write a comment
Image:
NASA astronaut Victor Glover installs the Fluid Dynamics in Space experiment, or Fluidics for short. Fluidics is the black cylinder pictured in the foreground of the European Columbus module of the International Space Station.
Developed by French space agency CNES and co-funded by Airbus, the Fluidics experiment is probing how fluids behave in weightlessness.
The experiment is made up of six small, transparent spheres housed in the black centrifuge seen here and is studying two phenomena.
The first is ‘sloshing’ or how liquids move inside closed spaces, which is hard to predict both with and without gravity. Think how
Op-ed | Space weather bill will fizzle without funding
Monday, 08 February 2021 14:30 Write a comment
On Oct. 21, 2020, the Promoting Research and Observations of Space Weather to Improve the Forecasting of Tomorrow (PROSWIFT) Act was signed into law. This act culminates a multiyear bipartisan effort championed by Sens. Gary Peters (D-Mich.
Swarm begins offering commercial satellite data service
Monday, 08 February 2021 14:00 Write a comment
SAN FRANCISCO – With 81 miniature satellites in orbit, internet-of-things startup Swarm announced the start of its commercial data service.
“Swarm is now live commercially,” Ben Longmier, Swarm co-founder and chief technology officer, told SpaceNews. “We have a bunch of commercial customers on the network.
Six ways satellites make the world a better place
Monday, 08 February 2021 13:40 Write a comment
Almost 3,000 operational spacecraft orbit our Earth. This number is growing constantly, thanks to cheaper materials and smaller satellites.
Having this many satellites in orbit can create problems, including space junk and the way they change our view of the night sky. But satellites provide a vital service.
Many people are familiar with GPS, which helps us navigate. Some may know satellites provide crucial data for our weather forecasts. But satellites affect our lives in many different ways—and some of these may surprise you.
1. Spending money
Whether you pay for your morning coffee using a contactless payment, Google Pay, or even with cash withdrawn from an ATM, none of it would be possible without satellites. In fact, all financial transactions—from multimillion pound stock market transactions, to your monthly Netflix subscription – rely on satellite location and timing services for security.
Global navigation satellite systems orbit about 20,000km above the surface of the Earth and continually communicate with phones and computers to tell them precisely where they are and what time it is.
Thales Alenia selected to build Telesat’s broadband constellation
Monday, 08 February 2021 13:30 Write a comment
WASHINGTON — Canadian satellite operator Telesat announced Feb. 9 it has selected Thales Alenia Space to manufacture 298 satellites for a broadband network in low-Earth orbit.
Telesat also announced that its constellation, named Lightspeed, will start offering services in 2023.
Jupiter's Trojan asteroids offer surprises
Monday, 08 February 2021 13:26 Write a comment
A new study out this month suggests that Jupiter's Trojan asteroids may be more peculiar than previously thought. The Trojan asteroids are rocky objects which orbit the sun just ahead of and just behind the gas giant, in gravitational sweet spots known as Lagrange points. The swarm ahead of Jupiter, known as the L4 (Greek) group, is slightly larger than the L5 (Trojan) swarm behind, but until now, astronomers believed that there was otherwise little differentiation between the two swarms. The paper released this month appears to change that.
The research team, using data from the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) based in Hawaii, has discovered unexpected variations in the shape of the Trojans. This new study suggests that objects in the L4 population are actually more elongated than those in the L5 population, on average.
Why does this matter? Well, the difference "may imply a different collisional evolution within each cloud," the paper suggests. The L4 swarm's larger population means objects within it have had had more opportunities to collide with one another. As one Trojan slams into another, larger objects are worn down or broken into smaller pieces.
Industry still sees strong demand for smallsat launch services
Monday, 08 February 2021 12:18 Write a comment
WASHINGTON — While some see a surge of launch vehicle development efforts as a sign of an “overheated” market, others see those efforts as a sign of shifting demand.
At a Feb. 4 webinar, Tory Bruno, chief executive of United Launch Alliance, said he was concerned that too much investment was going into launch companies, creating capabilities that were driving down prices but not stimulating demand.
Richard Shelby, senator with major influence over NASA, to retire
Monday, 08 February 2021 11:18 Write a comment
WASHINGTON — Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), an influential senator who has long been an advocate for some NASA programs and critic of others, announced Feb. 8 he will not run for reelection next year.
Shelby said in a statement that he would not seek a seventh term in the Senate in 2022.
Millie Hughes-Fulford, trailblazing astronaut, dies at 75
Monday, 08 February 2021 09:25 Write a comment
Millie Hughes-Fulford, a trailblazing astronaut and scientist who became the first female payload specialist to fly in space for NASA, died following a yearslong battle with cancer, her family said. She was 75.
Hughes-Fulford was selected by NASA for its astronaut program in 1983 and five years later, in June 1991, spent nine days in orbit on the shuttle Columbia, conducting experiments on the effect of space travel on humans as part of the agency's first mission dedicated to biomedical studies, STS-40. She and her crew mates circled the Earth 146 times.
The research shaped the rest of her career and upon her return she established the Hughes-Fulford Laboratory at the San Francisco VA Healthcare System, which worked to understand the mechanisms that regulate cell growth in mammals.
"She came back to her world as a scientist and carried this experience of having flown in space and that became a unique filter through which she passed all of her scientific work," said Dr. Mike Barratt, a NASA flight surgeon assigned to Columbia, told the San Francisco Chronicle.
The laboratory was active right up through Hughes-Fulford's own seven-year battle with lymphoma. She died Feb. 2, at her San Francisco home. Her death was confirmed by her granddaughter, Kira Herzog of Mill Valle.
Arab spacecraft closes in on Mars on historic flight
Monday, 08 February 2021 09:24 Write a comment
A spacecraft from the United Arab Emirates was set to swing into orbit around Mars in the Arab world's first interplanetary mission Tuesday, the first of three robotic explorers arriving at the red planet over the next week and a half.
The orbiter, called Amal, Arabic for Hope, traveled 300 million miles in nearly seven months to get to Mars with the goal of mapping its atmosphere throughout each season.
A combination orbiter and lander from China is close behind, scheduled to reach the planet on Wednesday. It will circle Mars until the rover separates and attempts to land on the surface in May to look for signs of ancient life.
A rover from the U.S.
ESA’s Solar Orbiter ducks behind the Sun
Monday, 08 February 2021 08:30 Write a comment
What happens when the Solar System's No. 1 source of violent energy interferes with spacecraft communication?
New era of Mars exploration begins as craft nears Red Planet
Monday, 08 February 2021 05:58 Write a comment
A new era of Mars exploration will begin Monday with the expected arrival of the United Arab Emirates' Hope spacecraft in the vicinity of the Red Planet - the first of three such arrivals planned for February.
The UAE probe will near Mars late Monday, and the mission will make a final, 27-minute orbital insertion burn, or correction, starting at 10:30 a.m. EST Tuesday.
Hope's ar