How magnetic waves interact with Earth's bubble
Tuesday, 27 December 2022 10:08
London, UK (SPX) Dec 22, 2022
A new study involving UCL has uncovered how magnetic waves are transmitted past a standing shock wave, known as the bow shock, that forms ahead of Earth as a result of the solar wind hitting our magnetic bubble (magnetosphere).
Shock waves occur in air when a plane travels faster than the speed of sound and also occur in plasma (a fourth state of matter that makes up 99% of the visible Uni

Hickenlooper Bill to clear space junk, protect space exploration, passes Senate unanimously
Tuesday, 27 December 2022 08:02
Washington DC (SPX) Dec 27, 2022
U.S. Senator John Hickenlooper applauded Senate passage of his Orbital Sustainability (ORBITS) Act, a bipartisan bill to establish a first-of-its-kind demonstration program to reduce the amount of space junk in orbit. The bill passed the Senate unanimously.
"From satellite communications to rockets carrying humans into deep space, space debris is a massive threat to space operations," said

NASA explores a winter wonderland on Mars
Tuesday, 27 December 2022 08:02
Pasadena CA (JPL) Dec 27, 2022
When winter comes to Mars, the surface is transformed into a truly otherworldly holiday scene. Snow, ice, and frost accompany the season's sub-zero temperatures. Some of the coldest of these occur at the planet's poles, where it gets as low as minus 190 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 123 degrees Celsius).
Cold as it is, don't expect snow drifts worthy of the Rocky Mountains. No region of Mars g

No oxygen required to make these minerals on Mars
Tuesday, 27 December 2022 08:02
St. Louis MO (SPX) Dec 27, 2022
When NASA's Mars rovers found manganese oxides in rocks in the Gale and Endeavor craters on Mars in 2014, the discovery sparked some scientists to suggest that the red planet might have once had more oxygen in its atmosphere billions of years ago.
The minerals probably required abundant water and strongly oxidizing conditions to form, the scientists said. Using lessons learned from Earth's

InSight goes silent as Martian dust and cold ends mission
Tuesday, 27 December 2022 08:02
Berlin, Germany (SPX) Dec 27, 2022
The InSight Mars mission is history. On 20 December 2022, NASA declared the mission over. The two attempts from Mission Control Centre at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California to reach the lander via relay satellites in Mars orbit have been unsuccessful. This almost certainly means that InSight's solar-powered batteries are no longer supplying enough power, a condition en

HAARP to bounce signal off asteroid in NASA experiment
Tuesday, 27 December 2022 08:02
Fairbanks AK (SPX) Dec 27, 2022
An experiment to bounce a radio signal off an asteroid on Dec. 27 will serve as a test for probing a larger asteroid that in 2029 will pass closer to Earth than the many geostationary satellites that orbit our planet.
The High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program research site in Gakona will transmit radio signals to asteroid 2010 XC15, which could be about 500 feet across. The Univer

Moon water imager integrated with NASA's Lunar Trailblazer
Tuesday, 27 December 2022 08:02
Pasadena CA (JPL) Dec 27, 2022
JPL's cutting-edge instrument, which will provide insights into the lunar water cycle and composition of the Moon's surface, has been incorporated into the small satellite. Lunar Trailblazer, NASA's mission to understand lunar water and the Moon's water cycle led by Caltech in Pasadena, California, is one step closer to launching next year. Earlier this month, the agency's Jet Propulsion Laborat

New technique reveals changing shapes of magnetic noise in space and time
Tuesday, 27 December 2022 08:02
Princeton NJ (SPX) Dec 27, 2022
Electromagnetic noise poses a major problem for communications, prompting wireless carriers to invest heavily in technologies to overcome it. But for a team of scientists exploring the atomic realm, measuring tiny fluctuations in noise could hold the key to discovery.
"Noise is usually thought of as a nuisance, but physicists can learn many things by studying noise," said Nathalie de Leon,

New study models the transmission of foreshock waves towards Earth
Tuesday, 27 December 2022 08:02
Helsinki, Finland (SPX) Dec 27, 2022
An international team of scientists led by Lucile Turc, an Academy Research Fellow at the University of Helsinki and supported by the International Space Science Institute in Bern has studied the propagation of electromagnetic waves in near-Earth space for three years. The team has studied the waves in the area where the solar wind collides with Earth's magnetic field called foreshock region, an

Three time dimensions, one space dimension
Tuesday, 27 December 2022 08:02
Warsaw. Poland (SPX) Dec 27, 2022
How would our world be viewed by observers moving faster than light in a vacuum? Such a picture would be clearly different from what we encounter every day. We should expect to see not only phenomena that happen spontaneously, without a deterministic cause, but also particles traveling simultaneously along multiple paths - argue theorists from universities in Warsaw and Oxford.
Also the ve

Virgin Orbit' Launcherone Systems given green light for upcoming mission
Tuesday, 27 December 2022 08:02
Newquay UK (SPX) Dec 27, 2022
The U.K. Civil Aviation Authority has issued launch and range control licenses to Virgin Orbit (Nasdaq: VORB) to undertake the first satellite launch from UK soil. The granting of these licenses represents a major step forward for the historic Start Me Up mission, and reflects the CAA's concurrence that all reasonable steps have been taken by Virgin Orbit to ensure the desired safety, security,

Inauguration of mainland Europe's first satellite launch complex
Tuesday, 27 December 2022 08:02
Esrange, Sweden (SPX) Dec 27, 2022
On 13 January 2023, the Swedish head of state, King Carl XVI Gustaf, together with European and Swedish political dignitaries will visit Esrange Space Center in northern Sweden to cut the ribbon of a new spaceport that will significantly reshape the European space landscape. After years of preparation and construction, European mainland's first orbital launch complex, Spaceport Esrange, will be

Martian winter wonderland across Ultimi Scopuli
Tuesday, 27 December 2022 08:02
Berlin, Germany (SPX) Dec 27, 2022
Christmas and winter spirit - also on Mars. Impact craters connected by a striped, coloured ribbon can be seen in the final and very wintry HRSC Mars image of this year. We wish all readers of our martian image series, published together with the European Space Agency (ESA) and Freie Universitat Berlin, happy holidays!
Image data from the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA's

The 10 Days of Christmas: Sols 3689-3698
Tuesday, 27 December 2022 08:02
Pasadena CA (JPL) Dec 27, 2022
On the first sol of Christmas, Curiosity will bring to us; one APXS analysis, one ChemCam analysis and a multitude of Mastcam, MAHLI and RMI images! On the second sol of Christmas, Curiosity will bring to us; more ChemCam RMI images, more Mastcam images, more Navcam images and drive to a new, exciting location.
To allow for the MSL science team and engineers to take some time off over the

Op-ed | Hazards don’t stop at the Kármán line
Monday, 26 December 2022 08:59
To ensure the safety of spaceflight travelers from launch to landing, the United States should consider the continuity of a single executive agency overseeing commercial human spaceflight activities.
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