By performing a series of real and 'fake' flybys, ESA’s Mars Express has revealed how Mars’ largest moon, Phobos, interacts with the solar wind of charged particles thrown out by the Sun – and spotted an elusive process that has only been seen at Phobos once before.

You spoke, we listened. Last September, we asked for your ideas for future space missions. Our goal was to tap into the insight, expertise and creativity of European citizens, companies and academia to help us plan for the future. Based on over 200 ideas, ESA Discovery & Preparation is now launching 11 new activities over the course of the coming year, that will together shape the future of space.

Long Beach CA (SPX) Dec 02, 2021
Rocket Lab USA, Inc. has closed the previously-announced transaction to acquire Planetary Systems Corporation (PSC), a Maryland-based spacecraft separation systems company, for $42 million in cash and 1,720,841 shares of the Company's common stock, plus the potential for an additional 956,023 shares of common stock for a performance earnout based on PSC's CY 2022 and 2023 financial results. Rock

Tsukuba, Japan (SPX) Dec 02, 2021
Current simulations of cosmic structure formation do not accurately reproduce the properties of ghost-like particles called neutrinos that have been present in the Universe since its beginning. But now, a research team from Japan has devised an approach that solves this problem. In a study published this month in SC '21: Proceedings of the International Conference for High Performance Comp

For Davis TX (SPX) Dec 02, 2021
Astronomers at The University of Texas at Austin's McDonald Observatory have discovered an unusually massive black hole at the heart of one of the Milky Way's dwarf satellite galaxies, called Leo I. Almost as massive as the black hole in our own galaxy, the finding could redefine our understanding of how all galaxies - the building blocks of the universe - evolve. The work is published in a rece

Flagstaff AZ (SPX) Dec 02, 2021
NAU PhD candidate Ari Koeppel, as part of a team of scientists from Northern Arizona and Johns Hopkins Universities, recently discovered that water was once present in a unique but brief manner in a region of Mars called Arabia Terra. Arabia Terra is in the northern latitudes of Mars. Named in 1879 by Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, this ancient land covers an area slightly large

Pasadena CA (JPL) Dec 02, 2021
The rover rarely drives in a straight line, and our recent drive took the "road less traveled" to investigate a bunch of boulders shed down from a cliff face off to the side of our expected traverse to the south. Why? Beneath the Greenheugh Pediment, the flat-lying, high-standing escarpment to the west, the scientists could see a unique layer with a convoluted texture. In our drive today,

Pasadena CA (JPL) Dec 02, 2021
The Perseverance rover is equipped with a large suite of cameras-23 to be exact-which collectively enable a wide range of scientific investigations and engineering activities. Since the rover's touchdown in Jezero crater, these cameras have served as our eyes on the ground. In less than a year, the rover has already returned thousands of stunning images of local surface features, which hav

Washington DC (SPX) Dec 02, 2021
Vice President Kamala Harris chaired the first National Space Council meeting of the Biden-Harris Administration Wednesday, Dec. 1 at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington. Prior to the meeting, President Biden expanded the number of participants of the council by executive order, reflecting the Biden-Harris administration's broad priorities and creating the largest, most diverse space counc

Paris (ESA) Dec 02, 2021
Recently completed tests of two propellant tanks set a first technological milestone in the ESA reusability roadmap towards the demonstration of a reusable first stage vehicle called Themis. Through the Themis programme, ESA aims to assess the economic value of reusability for Europe while investing in new technologies for potential use in ESA's future fleet of launch vehicles. The T