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ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer walks across the dusty terrain of LUNA, Europe's Moon on Earth. Nearby, ESA's Argonaut lander mock-up stands ready as he carefully navigates the simulated regolith - the dust, soil and rock on the Moon's surface. Alongside a fellow operator, he rehearses a moonwalk under the harsh glare of Sun simulators that mimic lunar lighting to test scientific tools designed to analyse lunar soil and rock.

ESA's robotic explorers, Interact and Spot, join the scene. Spot, the agile robot dog, picks up a sample while Interact, a wheeled robotic arm, supports this rehearsal of autonomous

The launch campaign of the next satellite to join the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission is progressing on schedule for launch on Tuesday, 4 November, on board an Ariane 6 rocket.

Washington DC (UPI) Oct 16, 2025
SpaceX set a milestone Thursday morning as it marked the 130th launch of its Falcon 9 rocket. The Falcon 9 that launched 28 Starlink satellites took off at 5:57 a.m. EDT Thursday morning from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida and deployed the devices into low-Earth orbit some 64 minutes after leaving the planet. It represented Falcon 9's 130th flight of the year, only

University Park PA (SPX) Oct 17, 2025
Frozen in time, ancient microbes or their remains could be found in Martian ice deposits during future missions to the Red Planet. By recreating Mars-like conditions in the lab, a team of researchers from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and Penn State demonstrated that fragments of the molecules that make up proteins in E. coli bacteria, if present in Mars' permafrost and ice caps, could remain

Gothenburg, Sweden (SPX) Oct 17, 2025
Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden and the US space agency NASA have made an unexpected discovery that challenges one of the basic rules of chemistry and provides new knowledge about Saturn's enigmatic moon Titan. In its extremely cold environment, normally incompatible substances can still be mixed. This discovery broadens our understanding of chemistry before the emerge

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Oct 18, 2025
If you've ever looked through a telescope - even a budget-friendly, accessible telescope that might as well be a toy - then you know how thrilling it can be to see aspects of our vast universe up close.

Washington DC (UPI) Oct 17, 2025
NASA's Orion spacecraft was moved seven miles to the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center Thursday, its second-to-last move before its scheduled launch in 2026. NASA got an exception to allow it to continue work during the government shutdown in certain areas, including the Artemis II mission. The spacecraft, which contains the crew and service modules, was moved sev

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Oct 17, 2025
Atomic-6, a specialist in advanced composite materials, has introduced Space Armor tiles - the first orbital debris shield designed to block hypervelocity impacts while allowing unhindered radio communications. These RF-permeable protection tiles are engineered to prevent fragmentation and eliminate the risk of secondary debris, setting a new benchmark in spacecraft safety and sustainability.

Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Oct 17, 2025
Space Quarters Inc., a deep-tech startup spun out from Tohoku University, has raised $5.0 million in seed funding to accelerate the development of robotic and electron beam welding systems for constructing large-scale infrastructure in orbit and on the Moon. The funding round was led by Frontier Innovations Inc., with additional investment from Keio Innovation Initiative, Global Brain's Tokyu Co