San Antonio TX (SPX) Jul 08, 2022
When NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft collected samples from asteroid Bennu's surface in 2020, forces measured during the interaction provided scientists with a direct test of the poorly understood near-subsurface physical properties of rubble-pile asteroids. Now, a Southwest Research Institute-led study has characterized the layer just below the asteroid's surface as composed of weakly bound rock f

Washington DC (SPX) Jul 08, 2022
NASA's CAPSTONE successfully completed its first trajectory correction maneuver, which started at 11:30 a.m. EDT Thursday. This is the first in a series of thruster burns over the next few months to more accurately target CAPSTONE's transfer orbit to the Moon. The maneuver lasted just over 11 minutes and changed the spacecraft's velocity by about 45 miles per hour (about 20 meters per second). C

Vienna, Austria (SPX) Jul 07, 2022
If you switch a bit in the memory of a computer and then switch it back again, you have restored the original state. There are only two states that can be called "0 and 1". However, an amazing effect has now been discovered at TU Wien (Vienna): In a crystal based on oxides of gadolinium and manganese, an atomic switch was found that has to be switched back and forth not just once, but twic

Fuerteventura and Lanzarote, part of the Canary Islands lying in the North Atlantic Ocean, are featured in this false-colour image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.

ESA’s new medium-lift Vega-C rocket is nearly ready for its inaugural flight. You can follow live on ESA Web TV. Flight VV21 will lift off as soon as 13 July at 13:13 CEST, pending suitable conditions for launch.

    Broadcast begins 12:45 CEST/11:45 BST on ESA Web TV

    13:13 CEST/12:13 BST – liftoff

NASA, in partnership with ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency), will release the James Webb Space Telescope’s first full-color images and spectroscopic data during a live broadcast beginning at 10:30 a.m. EDT Tuesday, July 12, from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Harder than diamond and more electrically conductive than copper while also a million times thinner than paper: graphene is the single greatest discovery of 21^st century materials science, and ESA has been working to benefit from its miraculous properties. A project to add ultra-thin graphene to traditional Lithium ion cells offers enhanced capacity and cycle life for future space batteries, which can now be manufactured in a cheaper, greener way – swapping toxic solvent for water and plant-based cellulose.

Video: 00:43:03

Watch the replay of the Q&A session with the media to learn more about the preparations for the upcoming launch of Vega-C. The inaugural flight of this new rocket in the Vega family is currently planned on 13 July 2022. Speakers include Stefano Bianchi, ESA Head of Flight Programmes Department, Benoit Pouffary, ESA Vega & Space Rider Launch System Engineering Manager, Ettore Scardecchia, Avio Head of Engineering and Mario Cosmo, ASI Director of Science and Research.

Europe’s leading companies and research institutes working on positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) technologies met at ESA’s technical heart in the Netherlands in mid-June for this year’s NAVISP Industry Days, devoted to the latest developments in the Agency’s Navigation Innovation and Support Programme.