As ESA’s Hera mission for planetary defence probes the Didymos twin asteroid system, it will be joined by a pioneering pair of breadbox-sized ‘CubeSats’. Juventas will perform radar soundings while Milani will image the bodies in a wider range of colours than the human eye can see, prospecting the mineral makeup of individual asteroid boulders.

Image: Eye of ESA’s asteroid mission

Image: For Asteroid Day, the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over the Shoemaker Impact Structure (formerly known as Teague Ring) in Western Australia.

ESA is diversifying its online presence with the launch of a Pinterest channel and is reaching out to this highly creative audience to plan a space-themed Halloween party around the launch of the international Webb mission later this year.

London UK (SPX) Jun 30, 2021
SKA Observatory Global Headquarters, UK, Tuesday 29 June 2021 - At a historic meeting of its Council last week, the recently formed SKA Observatory (SKAO) saw its Member States approve the start of construction of the SKA telescopes in Australia and South Africa. The two telescopes, currently designated SKA-Low and SKA-Mid, names which describe the radio frequency range they each cover, wi

Canberra, Australia (SPX) Jun 30, 2021
Scientists have for the first time detected black holes eating neutron stars, "like Pac Man", in a discovery documenting the collision of the two most extreme and enigmatic objects in the Universe. The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in the US and the Virgo gravitational-wave observatory in Italy have captured the gravitational waves from the death spiral and mer

Washington DC (SPX) Jun 30, 2021
Here on Earth, earthquakes and underwater volcanic eruptions may displace enough ocean water to create a tsunami, a drumbeat of waves reaching huge heights as they approach land. Now, astrophysicists have used computer simulations to show that in deep in space, tsunami-like structures may form on much bigger scales, from gas escaping the gravitational pull of a supermassive black hole. In

Sydney, Australia (SPX) Jun 30, 2021
An international group of astronomers has created images with never-before-seen detail of a galaxy cluster with a black hole at its centre, travelling at high speed along an intergalactic 'road of matter'. The findings also support existing theories of the origins and evolution of the universe. The concept that roads of thin gas connect clusters of galaxies across the universe has been dif

Washington DC (SPX) Jun 30, 2021
Many meteorites, which are small pieces from asteroids, do not experience high temperatures at any point in their existence. Because of this, these meteorites provide a good record of complex chemistry present when or before our solar system was formed 4.57 billion years ago. For this reason, researchers have examined individual amino acids in meteorites, which come in a rich variety and m

Tokyo (Sputnik) Jun 30, 2021
The Japanese government is considering sending a spacecraft to Mars's Phobos satellite in 2024 to obtain soil samples by 2029, public broadcaster NHK reported. The agency said that Japan's strategic council has compiled a mid-term report on space policy on Tuesday. According to it, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) intends to launch a probe and reach one of the two satellites o