Australia’s deadly bushfires in the 2019-2020 season generated 700 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – triggering vast algal blooms in the Southern Ocean. Using satellite data, two new studies published in Nature prove how satellites can illuminate the complicated ways in which Earth is responding to climate change in an era of worsening wildfires.

Gravitational waves are ripples in spacetime produced by the acceleration of very massive objects, such as black holes coming together and merging. 

Different objects in space produce gravitational waves of different timescales, ranging from milliseconds to billions of years. 

Some of these waves can only be observed from space.

This is the goal of ESA’s future mission LISA, which will be the first space-based gravitational wave observatory.

LISA will study gravitational waves that are produced by merging stellar mass black holes, supermassive black holes and white dwarfs. It will also pick up the waves produced by compact objects, like neutron stars

The FAA said Sept. 29 that it completed its investigation into a problem on Virgin Galactic’s most recent SpaceShipTwo flight, allowing the company to resume flights of the suborbital spaceplane.

SpaceNews

Capella Space named Amy Hopkins, former Boeing Phantom Works Strategy Director, as its first vice president and general manager of U.S. Government Services.

SpaceNews

An interactive simulation of the space environment developed by Slingshot Aerospace for military satellite operators is now being offered commercially, the company announced Sept. 29.

SpaceNews

Here is the programme for our virtual ESA Open Day 2021 on Sunday 3 October. Click on the link sent to your email to enter the Live Lobby where your introduction to the Open Day will take place from 1300 CEST. From there, you can choose which talks or events to attend across the various ‘rooms’ listed below. All times listed below are in CEST. (To attend the virtual Open Day you have to register - registrations close at 1200 CEST on Saturday).

Timelapse video made during ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet’s second mission to the International Space Station, “Alpha”. The camera is setup to take pictures at intervals of two a second, and the pictures are then edited into this video that plays at 25 pictures a second. The video is around 12 times faster than real speed.

Thomas shared this video on social media with the caption:

“Timelapse Tuesday: Approaching Europe at night, the Madeira islands seem to act as beacons that Portugal and Spain are on the horizon under the green hue of our atmosphere. The voyage continues over a