Netherlands in white
Wednesday, 10 February 2021 15:55
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As this Copernicus Sentinel-3 image captured today shows, the Netherlands remains pretty much snow-covered thanks to days of sub-zero temperatures following the country’s first major snowstorm in a decade. Researcher uses machine learning to classify stellar objects from TESS data
Wednesday, 10 February 2021 14:29
A game of chess has 20 possible opening moves. Imagine being asked to start a game with tens of millions of openings instead. That was the task assigned to Adam Friedman, a 2020 summer intern at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Here's the best place for explorers to harvest ice on Mars
Wednesday, 10 February 2021 13:32
Water ice, especially any located in the sub-surface, has long been a focal point of Mars exploration efforts. Reasons abound as to why—from the need to grow plants to the need to create more rocket fuel to blast off the planet for a round trip. Most of that effort has focused on the poles of the planet, where most of the water ice has been found.
Unfortunately, these extreme latitudes are also difficult locations for manned missions, due to their slack of sunlight and extremely low temperatures. Now, a team from the Planetary Science Institute (PSI) have mapped the density of water ice in a large chunk of the lower northern hemisphere, in an effort to help narrow down potential human landing sites at more welcoming latitudes.
Take me to your leader: Space diplomacy 101
Wednesday, 10 February 2021 13:31
Space has long been seen as the domain of scientists and engineers, but space also needs diplomacy.
But what exactly is space diplomacy and why do we need it?
Professor Melissa de Zwart is a self-described space nerd and the Dean of Adelaide Law School.
She's a board member of ANGELS, a project that provides space legal and regulatory information to the public. She combines her passion for space with her expertise in law and diplomacy.
The dawn of space diplomacy
"Once space became possible, we had the Cold War powers recognize early on that, if they didn't reach international agreement, it was going to be curtains for everyone. Basically, mutually assured destruction," says Melissa.
The US and USSR were worried about Kessler syndrome, where broken pieces of space debris so pollute Earth's orbit that it would be almost impossible to send future satellites to space.
"Now we rely on the space industry for almost every aspect of our lives."
When the world powers set the laws for sending satellites to space, they thought only governments would do it.
But now businesses and even individuals are going to space, and we need new rules.
HPE Spaceborne Computer-2 linked to Azure cloud for the Space Station
Wednesday, 10 February 2021 13:00
SAN FRANCISCO — Hewlett Packard Enterprise is preparing to send a second-generation Spaceborne Computer to the International Space Station later this month.
The Spaceborne Computer-2 will be linked to Microsoft’s Azure cloud through NASA and HPE ground stations, meaning the space station will have far more data processing power and better connections with Earth than ever before, HPE and Microsoft announced Feb.
Watch live: ESA outlines its search for astronauts
Wednesday, 10 February 2021 12:08
For the first time in over a decade, the European Space Agency (ESA) is seeking new astronauts. Tune in to ESA Web TV on Tuesday 16 February from 13:00 CET (12:00 GMT) for briefings in six languages and all you need to know.
How ESA is Helping NASA's Mars lander phone home
Wednesday, 10 February 2021 12:08
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ESA's Trace Gas Orbiter will relay data from NASA's Perseverance rover to ground stations on Earth A new method to search for potentially habitable planets
Wednesday, 10 February 2021 10:51
Imaging planets orbiting around nearby stars, which could potentially harbour life, has become a possibility thanks to the progress made in observational methods by an international team of astronomers. First candidate: Alpha Centauri, a system similar to ours, "only" 4.3 light years away. This study is the subject of a publication in the journal Nature Communications.
Efforts to obtain di Pollution could be one way to find an extraterrestrial civilization
Wednesday, 10 February 2021 10:51
If there's an advanced extraterrestrial civilization inhabiting a nearby star system, we might be able to detect it using its own atmospheric pollution, according to new NASA research. The study looked at the presence of nitrogen dioxide gas (NO2), which on Earth is produced by burning fossil fuels but can also come from non-industrial sources such as biology, lightning, and volcanoes.
"On China's Tianwen-1 probe enters Mars orbit: state media
Wednesday, 10 February 2021 10:51
China's Tianwen-1 probe entered the orbit of the planet Mars on Wednesday, state media said, after it launched from southern China last July.
It is the latest step in Beijing's ambitious space programme, which aims to establish a crewed space station by 2022 and eventually put a man on the moon, and has opened up a new, extraterrestrial arena for US-China competition.
Tianwen-1 launched Solar system's most distant planetoid confirmed
Wednesday, 10 February 2021 10:51
A team, including an astronomer from the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy (IfA), have confirmed a planetoid that is almost four times farther from the Sun than Pluto, making it the most distant object ever observed in our solar system. The planetoid, nicknamed "Farfarout," was first detected in 2018, and the team has now collected enough observations to pin down the orbit. The Minor Ozmens' SNC delivers prototype lunar crew module to DYNETICS
Wednesday, 10 February 2021 10:51
Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC), the global aerospace and national security company owned by Eren and Fatih Ozmen, delivered a prototype crew module for Dynetics' Human Landing System (DHLS), to NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC). Dynetics is a wholly owned subsidiary of Leidos. SNC is responsible for providing key technologies and system integration of the crew module as part of the Dynetics-led Ball Aerospace to build spacecraft for NASA Heliophysics Science Mission
Wednesday, 10 February 2021 10:51
Ball Aerospace was selected to build the spacecraft for NASA's Global Lyman-alpha Imager of the Dynamic Exosphere (GLIDE) heliophysics science Mission of Opportunity. GLIDE will study variability in Earth's exosphere, the upper reaches of Earth's atmosphere where it touches space, by tracking far ultraviolet light emitted from hydrogen.
Dr. Lara Waldrop of the University of Illinois Urbana Astronomers offer possible explanation for elusive dark-matter-free galaxies
Wednesday, 10 February 2021 10:51
A team led by astronomers at the University of California, Riverside, has found that some dwarf galaxies may today appear to be dark-matter free even though they formed as galaxies dominated by dark matter in the past.
Galaxies that appear to have little to no dark matter - nonluminous material thought to constitute 85% of matter in the universe - complicate astronomers' understanding of t