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Did you know, the Northern lights or Aurora Borealis are created when the mythical Finnish ‘Firefox’ runs so quickly across the snow that its tail causes sparks to fly into the night sky? At least, that’s one of the stories that has been told in Finland about this beautiful phenomenon. Another that we love comes from the Sámi people of Finnish Lapland (among others), who describe them as plumes of water ejected by whales.

What do they look like, to you?

Today’s scientific explanation for the origin of the Aurora wasn’t thought up until the 20^th Century, by the

Washington DC (UPI) Sep 20, 2021
Elon Musk's SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket with a payload of 22 Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit late Tuesday. The rocket launched at 11:38 p.m. EDT from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. SpaceX had said prior to launch that weather was 90% favorable for liftoff. The orbitals were deposited into space where they will join

Washington DC (SPX) Sep 19, 2023
Commercial drone technology is advancing rapidly, providing cost-effective and robust capabilities for a variety of civil and military missions. As small aerial vehicles play increasingly important military roles on the battlefield, adversaries are developing electromagnetic countermeasures to disrupt communication links between operator and drone, forcing the vehicle to abort mission, return to

Pasadena CA (JPL) Sep 19, 2023
A state-of-the-art imaging spectrometer, which will measure the greenhouse gases methane and carbon dioxide from space, moved closer to launch this month after being delivered to a clean room at Planet Labs PBC (Planet) in San Francisco. Designed and built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, this science instrument will be part of an effort led by the nonprofit Carb

ESA will open its doors to members of the public at its Earth Observation centre in Frascati, near Rome, Italy, on 29 September, as part of its annual open day.

In the quest to address climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, detecting methane leaks – a potent contributor to global warming – has become increasingly vital. Researchers are harnessing the capabilities of cutting-edge satellite technology to monitor these leaks from space.

Maui HI (SPX) Sep 20, 2023
Kayhan Space, the leading provider of high-performance software and solutions for space mission operations, has announced it has raised $7 million in an oversubscribed seed extension round to accelerate commercial delivery of the industry's first autonomous space traffic coordination (STC) framework, at the core of its all-new Pathfinder 3.0 spaceflight safety platform. Venture capital fir

Washington DC (SPX) Sep 20, 2023
On Sept. 17, NASA's OSIRIS-REx engineers slightly shifted the spacecraft's trajectory to refine the landing location of its sample capsule, which the spacecraft will deliver to Earth on Sept. 24. The spacecraft briefly fired its thrusters Sunday to change its velocity by 7 inches per minute (3 millimeters per second) relative to Earth. This final correction maneuver moved the sample capsul

Pasadena CA (JPL) Sep 20, 2023
Three billion years ago, amid one of the last wet periods on Mars, powerful debris flows carried mud and boulders down the side of a hulking mountain. The debris spread into a fan that was later eroded by wind into a towering ridge, preserving an intriguing record of the Red Planet's watery past. Now, after three attempts, NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has reached the ridge, capturing the fo

Paris (ESA) Sep 20, 2023
At their closest point in orbit, Earth and Jupiter are separated by almost 600 million kilometres. At the time of writing, five months after launch, Juice has already travelled 370 million kilometres, yet in time it's only 5% of the way there. Why is it taking sooo long? The answer depends on a variety of factors that flight dynamics experts at ESA's Mission Control know well, from the amo