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One week today, the first of a new generation of weather satellites will take to the skies. The Meteosat Third Generation system is the most complex and innovative meteorological satellite system ever built. It will bring new capabilities to monitor weather, climate and the environment from space like never before – promising to further bolster Europe’s leadership in weather forecasting.

Join us for the live launch coverage of the Metetosat Third Generation Imager on 13 December on ESA Web TV.

Landspace is preparing for a test launch of its Zhuque-2 rocket in what could be a marker for the progress being made by Chinese commercial launch companies.

NASA’s Orion spacecraft flew by the moon for a second and final time Dec. 5, performing a maneuver that sets up the spacecraft for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean in six days.

The post Orion swings by the moon on its way back to Earth appeared first on SpaceNews.

Beijing (XNA) Dec 06, 2022
Three Chinese astronauts on board the Shenzhou-14 manned spaceship returned to Earth safely on Sunday, after accomplishing many "firsts" during their six-month space station mission. Shenzhou-14's return capsule, carrying astronauts Chen Dong, Liu Yang and Cai Xuzhe, touched down at the Dongfeng landing site in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region at 8:09 p.m. Beijing Time, accor

Tucson AZ (SPX) Dec 06, 2022
On Earth, shifting tectonic plates reshuffle the planet's surface and make for a dynamic interior, so the absence of such processes on Mars led many to think of it as a dead planet, where not much happened in the past 3 billion years. In the current issue of Nature Astronomy, scientists from the University of Arizona challenge current views of Martian geodynamic evolution with a report on

Orlando FL (SPX) Dec 06, 2022
Establishing a Moon base will be critical for the U.S. in the new space race and building safe and cost-effective landing pads for spacecraft to touch down there will be key. These pads will have to stop lunar dust and particles from sandblasting everything around them at more than 10,000 miles per hour as a rocket takes off or lands since there is no air to slow the rocket plume down.

Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Dec 06, 2022
As happens occasionally, our previous plan did not execute quite as expected. There was an issue with the rover's avionics in Wednesday's plan just before MAHLI was to take images of our contact science target "Roxinho." This precluded that imaging, the subsequent drive and observations taken from our remote sensing mast. Thankfully our engineering team here at JPL assessed the fault and felt co

Beijing, China (SPX) Dec 06, 2022
A research team led by Prof. LI Yang and Dr. GUO Zhuang from the Institute of Geochemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IGCAS) conducted in-situ electron microanalysis of spherical iron-sulfide grains in the finest Chang'E-5 lunar soil and has confirmed the presence of impact-induced sub-microscopic magnetite. The study was published in Nature Communications on Nov. 23. Magnet

Greenbelt MD (SPX) Dec 06, 2022
Engineers at Ball Aerospace, one of the industrial partners for NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, have installed and aligned the element wheel assembly (pictured above) into the telescope's Wide Field Instrument. The assembly contains eight science filters, two dispersive elements (a grism and prism) and a "blank" element (used for internal calibration) that will help scientists solve so

Paris, France (SPX) Dec 06, 2022
Measurements by ESA's long-serving twin missions, Mars Express and Venus Express, have captured the dance between the intensity of high-energy cosmic rays and the influence of the Sun's activity across our inner Solar System. A comparison of data from the ASPERA plasma sensor, an instrument carried by both spacecraft, with the number of sunspots visible on the surface of the Sun shows how