Virgin Galactic selects Aurora Flight Sciences to build new motherships
Wednesday, 06 July 2022 19:05
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Virgin Galactic announced July 6 it signed an agreement with a Boeing subsidiary to build two new aircraft that will be used as launch platforms for its next-generation suborbital spaceplanes.
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Contact restored with NASA spacecraft headed to lunar orbit
Wednesday, 06 July 2022 19:03 Write a comment
Testing the effect of multicolor lighting on improving people's psychological state
Wednesday, 06 July 2022 15:02 Write a comment
As missions for deep space exploration and space habitats are put on the agenda, astronauts need to withstand being tested by multiple stressors in confined and isolated conditions during such long flights, especially because in deep space exploration, problems such as signal delays make astronauts feel the anxiety of being far away from Earth and the psychological fear of deep space.
According to a series of experiments conducted recently on Earth and during current space missions aboard the International Space Station (ISS), NASA believes that monotony of vision, in particular, aggravates the crew's anxiety, irritability, and depression. Moreover, a large number of studies have also found that crew members on long-term missions on the Antarctic Space Simulation Station are extremely susceptible to psychological problems caused by visual monotony and monochromatic colors.
User Consultation Meeting on Harmony: watch the replay
Wednesday, 06 July 2022 12:00 Write a comment
User Consultation Meeting on Harmony: watch the replay
Follow the discussions on Harmony – the candidate mission for ESA’s tenth Earth Explorer
City heat extremes
Wednesday, 06 July 2022 10:30 Write a comment
With air temperatures in excess of 10°C above the average for the time of year in parts of Europe, the United States and Asia, June 2022 has gone down as a record breaker. The fear is that these extreme early-season heatwaves are a taste of what could soon be the norm as climate change continues to take hold. For those in cities, the heat dissipates slower creating ‘urban heat islands’, which make everyday life even more of a struggle.
An instrument, carried on the International Space Station, has captured the recent land-surface temperature extremes for
New navigation missions for enhanced satnav and Earth mapping
Wednesday, 06 July 2022 10:22 Write a comment
ESA’s Navigation Directorate – already the design architect of the Galileo satellite navigation system, Europe’s largest satellite constellation – is reaching out to European industry as it plans the development and in-orbit validation of future ‘positioning, navigation and timing’ (PNT) missions into novel orbits.
L3Harris makes strategic investment in Mynaric
Wednesday, 06 July 2022 10:04 Write a comment
L3Harris is making a strategic investment in laser communications company Mynaric with plans to make increased use of that technology for space and other applications.
The post L3Harris makes strategic investment in Mynaric appeared first on SpaceNews.
Keeping the energy in the room
Wednesday, 06 July 2022 08:34 Write a comment
It may seem like technology advances year after year, as if by magic. But behind every incremental improvement and breakthrough revolution is a team of scientists and engineers hard at work.
UC Santa Barbara Professor Ben Mazin is developing precision optical sensors for telescopes and observatories. In a paper published in Physical Review Letters, he and his team improved the spectra reso Field Tests Help Prepare NASA Tech for Fire Season
Wednesday, 06 July 2022 08:34 Write a comment
Even before the summer's hottest, driest weather has arrived, wildfires have taken a heavy toll in some parts of the U.S. This spring, in collaboration with fire response teams, NASA researchers tested their prototype tools to help make the demanding job of wildland firefighters safer.
One element of the solution developed by NASA's Scalable Traffic Management for Emergency Response Operat Cataloging the diverse origins of Earth's minerals
Wednesday, 06 July 2022 08:34 Write a comment
A 15-year study led by the Carnegie Institution for Science details the origins and diversity of every known mineral on Earth, a landmark body of work that will help reconstruct the history of life on Earth, guide the search for new minerals and ore deposits, predict possible characteristics of future life, and aid the search for habitable planets and extraterrestrial life.
In twin papers Large Hadron Collider project discovers three new exotic particles
Wednesday, 06 July 2022 08:34 Write a comment
The Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) collaboration has announced the discovery of three new exotic particles. Exotic particles, such as these, had only been theorised but not observed until recently. These exotic particles are built out of quarks.
"Like proton or neutrons, the particles that make up the nucleus of the atom, these new particles are made up of quarks", explained Chris Par New launch vehicles set for test flights from China’s Jiuquan spaceport
Wednesday, 06 July 2022 08:18 Write a comment
Newly-developed orbital and suborbital launch vehicles are being readied for test flights at the Jiuquan spaceport as China’s efforts to foster a commercial space sector advance.
The post New launch vehicles set for test flights from China’s Jiuquan spaceport appeared first on SpaceNews.
Rover plus astronaut complete Mount Etna challenge
Wednesday, 06 July 2022 06:12 Write a comment
In a complex role-played version of a mission to the Moon, controllers at ESOC combined with a team of geological scientists and ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter to oversee a rover’s collection of rock samples. Acting as if he were in lunar orbit, the astronaut was in fact based in a hotel room in Catania, Sicily, with the rover 23 km away and 2 600 m uphill on the volcanic flanks of Mount Etna. As Thomas commanded the rover to pick up rocks his hand experienced just what the robot’s gripper felt – an added dimension in remote
Update on CAPSTONE communications issue
Tuesday, 05 July 2022 23:32 Write a comment
Following successful deployment and start of spacecraft commissioning on July 4, the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE) spacecraft experienced communications issues while in contact with the Deep Space Network.
The spacecraft team currently is working to understand the cause and re-establish contact. The team has good trajector Star with the shortest orbital period around black hole discovered
Tuesday, 05 July 2022 23:32 Write a comment
Researchers at the University of Cologne and Masaryk University in Brno (Czech Republic) have discovered the fastest known star, which travels around a black hole in record time. The star, S4716, orbits Sagittarius A*, the black hole in the centre of our Milky Way, in four years and reaches a speed of around 8000 kilometres per second. S4716 comes as close as 100 AU (astronomical unit) to the bl