International training
Monday, 29 March 2021 14:46
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ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti has started training at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, USA. Set to launch for her second mission in spring 2022, Samantha is already getting reacquainted with International Space Station systems in a series of refresher courses.
Samantha was last on the International Space Station in 2014 for her Futura mission. She spent 200 days in space, conducting European and international scientific experiments and Space Station operations.
In the coming months, her schedule will intensify as she trains for the specific experiments and tasks she will perform in space during her second mission.
As a collaborative, international effort
SpaceX Starship rocket test ends in another failure: Musk
Monday, 29 March 2021 14:35 Write a comment
SpaceX chief Elon Musk confirmed on Twitter Tuesday that the latest prototype of the company's Starship rocket series had crashed, after the video feed of its test flight cut out.
"At least the crater is in the right place!" he joked, in acknowledging the fourth failed test of the prototype.
"Something significant happened shortly after landing burn start. Should know what it was once we can examine the bits later today," he added.
The rocket, SN11, launched from the company's south Texas facility around 1300 GMT and began its ascent to 10 kilometers (six miles), experiencing some video glitches.
It was descending to the surface when the feed was lost once again.
"We lost the clock at T plus five minutes, 49 seconds," said announcer John Insprucker, meaning the amount of time that had passed after lift-off.
"Looks like we've had another exciting test of Starship Number 11," he added, dryly.
SN11 is the 11th prototype of Starship, which SpaceX hopes will one day be able to fly crewed missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond.
It was the fourth to conduct a test flight attempting to return to the ground for a soft vertical landing.
Two space fans get seats on billionaire's private flight
Monday, 29 March 2021 14:28 Write a comment
A billionaire's private SpaceX flight filled its two remaining seats Tuesday with a scientist-teacher and a data engineer whose college friend actually won a spot but gave him the prize.
The new passengers: Sian Proctor, a community college educator in Tempe, Arizona, and Chris Sembroski, a former Air Force missileman from Everett, Washington. They will join flight sponsor Jared Isaacman and another passenger for three days in orbit this fall.
Virgin Galactic rolls out latest generation of spaceship
Monday, 29 March 2021 14:25 Write a comment
Virgin Galactic rolled out its newest spaceship Tuesday as the company looks to resume test flights in the coming months at its headquarters in the New Mexico desert.
Company officials said it will likely be summer before the ship—designed and manufactured in California—undergoes glide flight testing at Spaceport America in southern New Mexico. That will coincide with the final round of testing for the current generation of spacecraft, which will be the one that takes British billionaire and Virgin Galactic founder Sir Richard Branson to the fringes of space later this year.
CEO Michael Colglazier said the addition of the new ship marks the beginning of Virgin Galactic having a fleet that will one day be capable of ferrying paying customers and scientific payloads from spaceports around the globe. The company is still aiming for commercial operations to begin next year following testing and a few months of downtime for maintenance and other upgrades.
Virgin Galactic has reached space twice before—the first time from California in December 2018. The company marked its second successful glide flight over Spaceport America last June.
Hanwha Systems to launch 2,000 LEO communications satellites by 2030
Monday, 29 March 2021 14:21 Write a comment
SEOUL, South Korea — Hanwha Systems, the South Korean conglomerate that added a bankrupt phased-array antenna maker to its growing portfolio last year, is planning to build and deploy a constellation of 2,000 satellites in low Earth orbit by 2030 to provide connectivity to urban cargo-delivery drones and passenger airplanes.
Op-ed | NASA Earth Science to “Meet the Moment”
Monday, 29 March 2021 14:07 Write a comment
Small businesses and large multinational corporations face incredible challenges and uncertainty in today’s world. Whether an uncertain economy, continuing impact of a pandemic, or the rapidly changing natural environment of water scarcity, ecosystem collapse, record high temperatures, wildfires, and sea level rise, today’s CEOs have a full docket of issues, all of which one way or another intersect with our changing planet.
SpaceX crashes another Starship prototype
Monday, 29 March 2021 13:52 Write a comment
WASHINGTON — SpaceX launched its fourth Starship prototype in less than four months March 30, only to have the vehicle apparently crash once again.
The Starship SN11 vehicle lifted off at approximately 9 a.m. Eastern from the company’s Boca Chica, Texas, test site, despite heavy fog that made it all but impossible to see the vehicle ascend.
ESAIL captures two million messages from ships at sea
Monday, 29 March 2021 12:58 Write a comment
The ESAIL microsatellite for making the seas safer has picked up more than two million messages from 70 000 ships in a single day.
Virgin Galactic unveils new suborbital spaceplane
Monday, 29 March 2021 11:30 Write a comment
WASHINGTON — Virgin Galactic revealed its latest suborbital spaceplane March 30, a vehicle that looks similar to its existing SpaceShipTwo but incorporates significant structural improvements.
The company unveiled the first of what it calls the “Spaceship III” line of vehicles, called VSS Imagine.
Photosynthesis could be as old as life itself
Monday, 29 March 2021 11:23 Write a comment
Researchers find that the earliest bacteria had the tools to perform a crucial step in photosynthesis, changing how we think life evolved on Earth.
The finding also challenges expectations for how life might have evolved on other planets. The evolution of photosynthesis that produces oxygen is thought to be the key factor in the eventual emergence of complex life. This was thought to take Direct observations confirm that humans are throwing Earth's energy budget off balance
Monday, 29 March 2021 11:23 Write a comment
Earth is on a budget - an energy budget. Our planet is constantly trying to balance the flow of energy in and out of Earth's system. But human activities are throwing that off balance, causing our planet to warm in response.
Radiative energy enters Earth's system from the sunlight that shines on our planet. Some of this energy reflects off of Earth's surface or atmosphere back into space. Astronomy and Landscape in the city of Caral, the oldest city in the Americas
Monday, 29 March 2021 11:23 Write a comment
A team of researchers, led by the Instituto de Ciencias del Patrimonio (Incipit-CSIC) and the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC), in collaboration with the team from the Arqueological Zone of Caral (Peru) led by Dr.
Ruth Shady Solis, has established the relation between the position of the monuments of the Supe Culture (Peru), their orientations, and some astronomical and topograph Brian May helps show Hera’s target asteroid may be ‘dust bunny’
Monday, 29 March 2021 10:16 Write a comment
An international research group, including Queen guitarist and astrophysicist Brian May, has shown how the same forces responsible for building dust bunnies under our beds may be responsible for holding the asteroid Didymos together.
NASA exchanged data with China on Mars orbiters
Monday, 29 March 2021 08:40 Write a comment
WASHINGTON — NASA sought congressional approval to talk with Chinese counterparts and obtain information on the orbit of China’s new Mars spacecraft, a move intended to lower the risk of a collision with other Mars orbiters.
When clouds collide
Monday, 29 March 2021 08:00 Write a comment
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When clouds collide