House Science Committee advances budget reconciliation package
Friday, 10 September 2021 09:18
The House Science Committee approved its portion of a massive budget reconciliation spending bill Sept. 9, making no major changes to its NASA provisions.
Volcanic trenches on Mars
Friday, 10 September 2021 09:00
Image:
This image of the young volcanic region of Elysium Planitia on Mars [10.3°N, 159.5°E] was taken on 14 April 2021 by the CaSSIS camera on the ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO).
The two blue parallel trenches in this image, called Cerberus Fossae, were thought to have formed by tectonic processes. They run for almost one thousand km over the volcanic region. In this image, CaSSIS is looking straight down into one of these 2 km-wide fissures.
The floor here is a few hundred metres deep and is filled with coarse-grained sand, likely basaltic in composition, which appears blue in the
Selection begins | ESA’s next astronauts
Friday, 10 September 2021 09:00
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Work is under way to sort and assess applications from more than 22 500 ESA astronaut hopefuls. The rigorous selection process will take around 18 months. Initial screening to ensure that basic criteria are met will be followed by medical and psychological tests, exercises and interviews.
ESA plans to recruit 4-6 new astronauts through this 2021-22 selection round to support the future of European space exploration. This is likely to include missions to the International Space Station as well as the Moon. As part of the selection process, ESA is also assessing the feasibility of flying an astronaut
Inspiration4 private crewed mission nears launch
Friday, 10 September 2021 08:42
SpaceX is gearing up for its first purely commercial human spaceflight, but many details about the mission remain unclear.
Earth from Space: Danube Delta
Friday, 10 September 2021 07:00
The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over the Danube Delta – the second largest river delta in Europe.
Cassini’s wake: how might a spacecraft disturb its own measurements?
Friday, 10 September 2021 06:30
Simply by moving through the heavens, spacecraft change the space about them. Such interactions are invisible to the naked eye, but can endanger mission performance and safety. A new ESA Resarch Fellow study simulated the Cassini spacecraft in the vicinity of Saturn, checking their findings against actual space measurements. It reveals Cassini cast an ‘ion wake’ up to 6 m behind it, a void of plasma particles like a trail of a boat.
VP wants more diversity in the National Space Council’s industry advisory group
Thursday, 09 September 2021 22:47
A notice could appear in the Federal Register as early as next week seeking nominations for the National Space Council’s industry advisory group, the council’s executive secretary Chirag Parikh said Sept.
Fostering diversity and inclusion takes work
Thursday, 09 September 2021 21:30
Attracting and retaining a diverse workforce requires organizations to adopt a proactive approach, according to panelists at the Satellite 2021 conference.
New spacesuit technology for moon and Mars exploration tested where Apollo astronauts once trained and tested spacesuits
Thursday, 09 September 2021 21:25
China launches ChinaSat-9B broadcast satellite
Thursday, 09 September 2021 20:58
China conducted its 33rd launch of 2021 early Thursday, successfully sending the ChinaSat-9B communications satellite into geosynchronous transfer orbit.
Space SPACs could prompt new wave of acquisitions
Thursday, 09 September 2021 20:19
The current wave of space startups going public through mergers with special-purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) might lead to a round of industry consolidation as they snap up suppliers to obtain their technologies or personnel.
Cobham SATCOM to build Thuraya 4-NGS ground system
Thursday, 09 September 2021 19:53
Emirati fleet operator Yahsat has picked private equity-owned Cobham SATCOM to build the ground system for its next-generation Thuraya 4-NGS satellite.
Satellite propulsion startup Benchmark eyes growth in military market
Thursday, 09 September 2021 19:07
Small satellite propulsion suppliers see opportunities in the military market as the Pentagon shifts focus to smallsats.
Satellite in sun's backyard unravels the origins of interplanetary dust
Thursday, 09 September 2021 18:58
What do shooting stars and astronaut safety have in common?
Both stem from the sub-microscopic rock fragments found throughout the solar system, sometimes called interplanetary dust.
When these particles collide with Earth's atmosphere, they create meteors, better known as shooting stars, as the (usually) microscopic fragments vaporize and leave flaming trails through the air. When they collide with astronauts, they can puncture holes in space suits—or worse. Understanding the sources and patterns of this interplanetary dust is therefore very important to NASA, as it plans for missions to the moon, Mars and beyond.
During its revolutions around the sun, the Parker Solar Probe spacecraft, the mission going closer to the sun than anything in spacefaring history, is bombarded by these dust particles. When crashing onto the spacecraft, the tiny grains—some as small as a ten-thousandth of a millimeter across—vaporize and release a cloud of electrically charged particles that can be detected by FIELDS, a suite of instruments designed to detect electric and magnetic fields.
A pair of papers publishing this week in The Planetary Science Journal use FIELDS data to take an up-close look at the "zodiacal cloud," the collective term for these tiny particles.
Launch companies optimistic about future demand
Thursday, 09 September 2021 18:57
Launch companies that have suffered from flat or declining traditional markets in recent years say they believe a surge of demand, primarily from satellite megaconstellations, will boost their businesses later this decade.