ALMA demonstrates highest resolution yet
Thursday, 16 November 2023 06:10
ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) has demonstrated the highest resolution yet with observations of an old star. The observations show that the star is surrounded by a ring-like structure of gas and that gas from the star is escaping to the surrounding space. Future observations with the newly demonstrated high resolution are expected to elucidate, not only the end of a star's l With unprecedented flares, stellar corpse shows signs of life
Thursday, 16 November 2023 06:10
After a distant star's explosive death, an active stellar corpse was the likely source of repeated energetic flares observed over several months - a phenomenon astronomers had never seen before, a Cornell-led team reports in new research published Nov. 15 in Nature.
The bright, brief flashes - as short as a few minutes in duration, and as powerful as the original explosion 100 days later - Nobody wants a Musk monopoly on satellite internet: Eutelsat boss
Thursday, 16 November 2023 00:29
The boss of European satellite operator Eutelsat knows her task will not be easy: to forge a competitor to Elon Musk's Starlink and provide superfast internet from space.
"We have a lot of customers who want us to get there quickly," Eva Berneke told AFP in an interview.
"They tell us they took Starlink because there wasn't anyone else. But they want competition too. Nobody wants a monop US regulator greenlights Starship's next launch on Friday
Thursday, 16 November 2023 00:29
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Wednesday authorized SpaceX to carry out its second launch of Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built, after a first attempt in April ended in a spectacular explosion.
In a statement, the FAA said Elon Musk's company had now "met all safety, environmental, policy and financial responsibility requirements" following the mishap that marred Crystals brought back by astronauts show that the Moon is 40 million years older than scientists thought
Thursday, 16 November 2023 00:29
More than 4 billion years ago, when the Solar System was still young and the Earth was still growing, a giant object the size of Mars crashed into the Earth. The biggest piece that broke off of the early Earth formed our Moon. But precisely when this happened has remained a mystery. In a new study in the journal Geochemical Perspectives Letters, researchers used crystals brought back from the Mo InSight seismic data reveals a molten layer at the base of the Martian mantle
Thursday, 16 November 2023 00:29
The first data from the InSight mission made it possible to determine the internal structure of Mars in a series of papers from the scientific team published in the summer of 2021. However, since then, the analysis of new data generated by a powerful meteorite impact that occurred on September 18 2021, questioned the first estimates of the internal structure of IXPE untangles theories surrounding historic supernova remnant
Thursday, 16 November 2023 00:29
NASA's IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) telescope has captured the first polarized X-ray imagery of the supernova remnant SN 1006. The new results expand scientists' understanding of the relationship between magnetic fields and the flow of high-energy particles from exploding stars.
"Magnetic fields are extremely difficult to measure, but IXPE provides an efficient way for us to p 
A novel system for slip prevention in unmanned rovers
Wednesday, 15 November 2023 20:19
Given the hostile conditions of extraterrestrial environments, unmanned rovers play a critical role in the exploration of planets and moons. NASA's Mars and lunar exploration rovers have significantly contributed to our understanding of these extraterrestrial bodies. Planetary surfaces often present challenging landscapes with slopes, craters, and dunes.
AST SpaceMobile adjusts launch plan for potential direct-to-device customer
Wednesday, 15 November 2023 20:11
Rocket exhaust on the moon: NASA supercomputers reveal surface effects
Wednesday, 15 November 2023 19:36
Through Artemis, NASA plans to explore more of the moon than ever before with human and robotic missions on the lunar surface. Because future landers will be larger and equipped with more powerful engines than the Apollo landers, mission risks associated with their operation during landing and liftoff is significantly greater. With the agency's goal to establish a sustained human presence on the moon, mission planners must understand how future landers interact with the lunar surface as they touch down in unexplored moonscapes.
Landing on the moon is tricky. When missions fly crew and payloads to the lunar surface, spacecraft control their descent by firing rocket engines to counteract the moon's gravitational pull. This happens in an extreme environment that's hard to replicate and test on Earth, namely, a combination of low gravity, no atmosphere, and the unique properties of lunar regolith—the layer of fine, loose dust and rock on the moon's surface.
Each time a spacecraft lands or lifts off, its engines blast supersonic plumes of hot gas toward the surface and the intense forces kick up dust and eject rocks or other debris at high speeds.
Rocket Factory Augsburg perceives historic moment for European launch industry
Wednesday, 15 November 2023 19:19
Fall into an ice giant's atmosphere
Wednesday, 15 November 2023 19:08
The unique atmospheric compositions of "ice giant" planets Uranus and Neptune were recreated to simulate a plunge deep within them, using suitably adapted European shocktubes and plasma facilities.
Taking place as part of an effort to simulate the flight of proposed atmospheric probes, the test campaign achieved an equivalent speed up to 19 km/s—although further work will be needed to reach the actual velocities that probes into these gas giants would attain.
Testing took place inside the hypersonic plasma T6 Stalker Tunnel at Oxford University in the U.K., along with the University of Stuttgart's High Enthalpy Flow Diagnostics Group's plasma wind tunnels in Germany, as shown in the video clip here.
Whether by impacts, landings or atmospheric probes, human-made spacecraft have touched all the planets of the solar system except two: the outer gas giants Uranus and Neptune.
Now both NASA and ESA are considering future missions to this intriguing pair, almost identical in size.
How NASA's Roman Space Telescope will chronicle the active cosmos
Wednesday, 15 November 2023 19:07
NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will pair space-based observations with a broad field of view to unveil the dynamic cosmos in ways that have never been possible before.
"Roman will work in tandem with NASA observatories such as the James Webb Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory, which are designed to zoom in on rare transient objects once they've been identified, but seldom if ever discover them," said Julie McEnery, Roman's senior project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
"Roman's much larger field of view will reveal many such objects that were previously unknown. And since we've never had an observatory like this scanning the cosmos before, we could even find entirely new classes of objects and events."
The mission's High Latitude Time-Domain Survey is well-designed to discover a particular type of exploding star that astronomers can use to trace the evolution of the universe and probe possible explanations for its accelerated expansion.