China's space tracking ship completes satellite launch monitoring
Thursday, 21 January 2021 09:58
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China's space tracking ship Yuanwang-5 completed its mission in the Pacific Ocean to monitor and ensure the launch of the Tiantong 1-03 satellite on Wednesday.
China successfully launched the mobile telecommunication satellite at 12:25 a.m. (Beijing Time) on Wednesday. The satellite entered its planned orbit.
As the only maritime monitoring site for the launch, Yuanwang-5 was respons Counting elephants from space
Thursday, 21 January 2021 09:58 Write a comment
For the first time, scientists have successfully used satellite cameras coupled with deep learning to count animals in complex geographical landscapes, taking conservationists an important step forward in monitoring populations of endangered species.
For this research, the satellite Worldview 3 used high-resolution imagery to capture African elephants moving through forests and grasslands. Iodine thruster could slow space junk accumulation
Thursday, 21 January 2021 09:29 Write a comment
For the first time ever, a telecommunications satellite has used an iodine propellant to change its orbit around Earth.
The small but potentially disruptive innovation could help to clear the skies of space junk, by enabling tiny satellites to self-destruct cheaply and easily at the end of their missions, by steering themselves into the atmosphere where they would burn up.
Sardinia, Italy
Thursday, 21 January 2021 09:00 Write a comment
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Sardinia, the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, is featured in this false-colour image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission. Earth from Space: Sardinia
Thursday, 21 January 2021 09:00 Write a comment
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00:03:23
This week's edition of the Earth from Space programme features a Copernicus Sentinel-2 image of Sardinia, the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.
See also Sardinia, Italy to download the image.
Google to shut down Loon
Thursday, 21 January 2021 03:16 Write a comment
WASHINGTON — Google announced Jan. 21 it is shutting down Loon, a venture to provide wireless connectivity by balloon that has been seen as both complementary to and competitive with satellite networks.
In a blog post, Astro Teller, head of X, the advanced projects or “moonshot factory” division of Google parent company Alphabet, announced that Loon will wind down operations in the next several months.
Green propellant successfully demonstrated on NASA mission
Thursday, 21 January 2021 01:24 Write a comment
WASHINGTON — A recent NASA mission successfully demonstrated the performance of a non-toxic “green” propellant, creating opportunities for its use in a wide range of future spacecraft.
NASA flew the Green Propellant Infusion Mission (GPIM) spacecraft as one of the payloads on the Space Test Program 2 mission that launched on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy in June 2019.
Northrop Grumman test fires solid motor for ULA’s Vulcan rocket
Wednesday, 20 January 2021 23:41 Write a comment
WASHINGTON — Northrop Grumman announced Jan. 21 it completed a static firing of the strap-on solid booster it developed for United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan Centaur rocket.
The test fire of the extended length 63-inch-diameter Graphite Epoxy Motor (GEM 63XL) took place on Thursday at the company’s facility in Promontory, Utah.
Air Force Academy to produce more officers for Space Force
Wednesday, 20 January 2021 22:29 Write a comment
WASHINGTON — As many as 116 graduates of the U.S. Air Force Academy this year will join the U.S. Space Force. That is an increase from last year when 86 graduates went to the space service.
Space industry executive calls on Biden to keep the National Space Council
Wednesday, 20 January 2021 21:17 Write a comment
WASHINGTON — The chief executive of Virgin Orbit’s sister company VOX Space called on the Biden administration to continue the National Space Council that former president Donald Trump revived in 2017.
“Keeping the National Space Council intact is a good thing to do,” Mandy Vaughn said Jan.
NASA mission to test technology for satellite swarms
Wednesday, 20 January 2021 20:41 Write a comment
A NASA mission slated for launch on Friday will place three tiny satellites into low-Earth orbit, where they will demonstrate how satellites might track and communicate with each other, setting the stage for swarms of thousands of small satellites that can work cooperatively and autonomously.
Zac Manchester, an assistant professor in Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute and the mission's principal investigator, said small satellites have grown in popularity over the last 10 years, as some companies already are launching hundreds into orbit to perform tasks such as Earth imaging and weather forecasting.
These satellites now are individually controlled from the ground. As swarms grow bigger and more sophisticated, Manchester noted, they will need to respond to commands almost as a single entity.
Astronomers estimate Titan's largest sea is 1,000-feet deep
Wednesday, 20 January 2021 17:34 Write a comment
Far below the gaseous atmospheric shroud on Saturn's largest moon, Titan, lies Kraken Mare, a sea of liquid methane. Cornell University astronomers have estimated that sea to be at least 1,000-feet deep near its center—enough room for a potential robotic submarine to explore.
After sifting through data from one of the final Titan flybys of the Cassini mission, the researchers detailed their findings in "The Bathymetry of Moray Sinus at Titan's Kraken Mare," which published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.
"The depth and composition of each of Titan's seas had already been measured, except for Titan's largest sea, Kraken Mare—which not only has a great name, but also contains about 80% of the moon's surface liquids," said lead author Valerio Poggiali, research associate at the Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science (CCAPS).
3-D printing to pave the way for moon colonization
Wednesday, 20 January 2021 14:29 Write a comment
A research team from the Skoltech Center for Design, Manufacturing and Materials (CDMM) comprising 2nd year Ph.D. student Maxim Isachenkov, Senior Research Scientist Svyatoslav Chugunov, Professor Iskander Akhatov, and Professor Igor Shishkovsky has prepared an extensive review on the use of Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies (also known as 3-D-printing) in crewed lunar exploration. Their paper published in the journal Acta Astronautica contains a comprehensive description of the geological composition of the lunar surface and the properties of lunar soil (lunar regolith) and its simulants, detailing their mineralogy, morphology, and chemical composition, in the light of their future use as feedstock for 3-D-printing on the moon surface.
The authors evaluated different 3-D-printing techniques presented in literature in terms of their suitability for in-situ manufacturing and maintainability, with focus on the adaptation of AM methods to low gravity, limited energy consumption, dimension and weight constraints of AM components delivered to the moon, scalability of AM technologies, low-gravity performance of 3-D-printing methods, and autonomy of AM applications.
Rocks show Mars once felt like Iceland
Wednesday, 20 January 2021 14:21 Write a comment
Once upon a time, seasons in Gale Crater probably felt something like those in Iceland. But nobody was there to bundle up more than 3 billion years ago.
The ancient Martian crater is the focus of a study by Rice University scientists comparing data from the Curiosity rover to places on Earth where similar geologic formations have experienced weathering in different climates.
Oldest carbonates in the solar system
Wednesday, 20 January 2021 14:21 Write a comment
A meteorite that fell in northern Germany in 2019 contains carbonates which are among the oldest in the solar system; it also evidences the earliest presence of liquid water on a minor planet. The high-resolution Ion Probe—a research instrument at the Institute of Earth Sciences at Heidelberg University—provided the measurements. The investigation by the Cosmochemistry Research Group led by Prof. Dr. Mario Trieloff was part of a consortium study coordinated by the University of Münster with participating scientists from Europe, Australia and the U.S.