While optical technology shows great promise for intersatellite relay links, ground segment providers doubt it will be widely adopted among their terrestrial networks any time soon.

The post Laser links are great for satellite relay, but challenges abound for taking it to ground appeared first on SpaceNews.

Press Release N° 72–2022

Arianespace announced early today the failure of Flight VV22 carrying Pléiades Neo 5 and 6 satellites.

British regulators have issued a launch license to Virgin Orbit for its first LauncherOne mission from the United Kingdom, now expected to take place in January.

The post Virgin Orbit receives license for U.K.

The fiscal year 2023 omnibus spending bill provides two agencies with much, but not all, of the budget increases they requested to take on new or expanding commercial space work.

The post Omnibus includes budget increases for Office of Space Commerce and FAA commercial space office appeared first on SpaceNews.

Year in images 2022

Our year through the lens: a selection of our favourite images for 2022

Pasadena CA (JPL) Dec 20, 2022
Sometimes, I think Mars rocks are just a bunch of toddlers whom we have told to tidy their play room. And the more we want something, the more resistance we get. The latest episode of 'This-rock-is-too-hard-to-drill, says the rock,' reminded me of our drill attempt at Vera Rubin Ridge. In June 2018, we had drilled Duluth and also weathered the dust storm. We then tried to drill a specific type o

Pasadena CA (JPL) Dec 20, 2022
Scientists have completed the longest-ever study tracking temperatures in Jupiter's upper troposphere, the layer of the atmosphere where the giant planet's weather occurs and where its signature colorful striped clouds form. The work, conducted over four decades by stitching together data from NASA spacecraft and ground-based telescope observations, found unexpected patterns in how temperatures

Houston TX (SPX) Dec 20, 2022
Rice University astronomer Megan Reiter and colleagues took a "deep dive" into one of the first images from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and were rewarded with the discovery of telltale signs from two dozen previously unseen young stars about 7,500 light years from Earth. The published research in the December issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society offers a gli

Durham UK (SPX) Dec 20, 2022
Astronomers say they have solved an outstanding problem that challenged our understanding of how the Universe evolved - the spatial distribution of faint satellite galaxies orbiting the Milky Way. These satellite galaxies exhibit a bizarre alignment - they seem to lie on an enormous thin rotating plane - called the "plane of satellites" This seemingly unlikely arrangement had puzzled