ExoMars discovers new gas and traces water loss on Mars
Tuesday, 09 February 2021 19:00
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Sea salt embedded in the dusty surface of Mars and lofted into the planet’s atmosphere has led to the discovery of hydrogen chloride – the first time the ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter has detected a new gas. The spacecraft is also providing new information about how Mars is losing its water.
At the rim of a crater
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At the rim of a crater Discovering new gases on Mars
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The ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter is investigating the martian atmosphere. Discovering new gases related to active process and looking for their sources is a key goal of the mission. ExoMars has discovered hydrogen chloride for the first time. It appeared during a global dust storm in 2018 and disappeared again afterwards. The detection was made in both hemispheres simultaneously so it is unlikely to come from volcanic activity. Seasonal change that triggers dust activity is thought to be the driving force behind the observation. Salt in the dusty surface – left over from when Mars had
Alpha Insights reveals plans for dual-band SAR satellites
Tuesday, 09 February 2021 18:43 Write a comment
SAN FRANCISCO – Another synthetic aperture radar (SAR) startup has emerged.
Entrepreneur Scott Larson, who co-founded Urthecast and Helios Wire, is leading Alpha Insights, a Toronto company established in 2020 to acquire the SAR assets of Urthecast, which filed for protection from creditors in 2020 to avoid bankruptcy.
NASA Study: To Find an Extraterrestrial Civilization, Pollution Could Be the Solution
Tuesday, 09 February 2021 17:00 Write a comment
If there’s an advanced extraterrestrial civilization inhabiting a nearby star system, we might be able to detect it using its own atmospheric pollution, according to new NASA research. Analytical Space wins $26.4 million to establish optical network
Tuesday, 09 February 2021 16:09 Write a comment
SAN FRANCISCO – Satellite communications startup Analytical Space Inc. won a $26.4 million contract to develop and launch six cubesats and two hosted payloads to begin establishing the Fast Pixel Network for optical communications.
The three-year contract was awarded by AF Ventures, the service’s venture arm, with funding from the U.S.
Chinese spacecraft enters Mars' orbit, joining Arab ship
Tuesday, 09 February 2021 15:17 Write a comment
Keeping it fluid: Probing how fluids behave in weightlessness
Tuesday, 09 February 2021 14:35 Write a comment
NASA astronaut Victor Glover installs the Fluid Dynamics in Space experiment, or Fluidics for short. Fluidics is the black cylinder pictured in the foreground of the European Columbus module of the International Space Station.
Developed by French space agency CNES and co-funded by Airbus, the Fluidics experiment is probing how fluids behave in weightlessness.
The experiment is made up of six small, transparent spheres housed in the black centrifuge seen here and is studying two phenomena.
The first is 'sloshing' or how liquids move inside closed spaces, which is hard to predict both with and without gravity. Think how frustrating it can be to get the last drop out of a packet of orange juice, then imagine the challenge for engineers designing satellites to use every drop of fuel in weightlessness, or designing rockets with fuel tanks that must deliver fuel to the engines under extreme loads. Insights can help industry design better satellite fuel-systems to increase their life and make them less expensive.
A second part of the experiment looks at wave turbulence in liquids. On Earth, gravity and surface tension influence how energy dissipates in waves or ripples.
As new probes reach Mars, here's what we know so far from trips to the red planet
Tuesday, 09 February 2021 14:27 Write a comment
Three new spacecraft are due to arrive at Mars this month, ending their seven-month journey through space.
The first, the United Arab Emirates' Hope Probe, should have made it to the red planet this week. It will stay in orbit and study its atmosphere for one complete Martian year (687 Earth days).
China's Taiwen-1 mission also enters orbit this month and will begin scouting the potential landing site for its Mars rover, due to be deployed in May.
If successful, China will become the second country to land a rover on Mars.
These two missions will join six orbiting spacecraft actively studying the red planet from above:
NASA's Mars Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and MAVEN OrbiterEurope's Mars ExpressIndia's Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM)the European and Russian partnership ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter.
The oldest active probe—Mars Odyssey—has been orbiting the planet for 20 years.
The third spacecraft to reach Mars this month is NASA's Perseverance rover, scheduled to land on February 18.
Image: Proba-V's plus one
Tuesday, 09 February 2021 13:17 Write a comment
This satellite mockup, seen during antenna testing, shows the shape of ESA's new Proba-V Companion CubeSat, which is due for launch at the end of this year.
The mission is a 12-unit CubeSat—a small, low-cost satellite built up from standardized 10-cm boxes. It will fly a cut-down version of the vegetation-monitoring instrument aboard the Earth-observing Proba-V to perform experimental combined observations with its predecessor.
A pair of antennas for the CubeSat, mounted in this 'structural and thermal model' underwent testing at ESA's Compact Antenna Test Range at the ESTEC technical center in the Netherlands.
"The white patch is a directional high-data rate antenna, needed to downlink large amounts of imagery to users," explains Xavier Collaud of Aerospacelab in Belgium, developing the mission for ESA. "Then the brown patch is an omnidirectional antenna, that—combined with a similar antenna on the other side—allows the reception and transmission of lower-data rate signals in any direction, enabling the control of the mission.
"These antennnas are commercial off the shelf equipment, allowing the building up of small satellites in an affordable, modular manner.
China’s Tianwen-1 enters orbit around Mars
Tuesday, 09 February 2021 12:59 Write a comment
HELSINKI — China’s first interplanetary mission, Tianwen-1, successfully entered Mars orbit Feb.
ESA's Solar Orbiter ducks behind the sun
Tuesday, 09 February 2021 12:37 Write a comment
Name: Solar Orbiter, or "Solo' as the mission control team fondly call it, is one of the European Space Agency's pluckiest missions and is now cruising toward the sun.
Age: One year old! We launched on 10 February 2020. Granted, it was first powered up on Earth at some point during construction, but launch is 'when it came alive."
What's it doing out there? It's imaging our star, observing the solar wind and unraveling mysteries of the solar cycle. It's already returned some of the best images of ol'Sol ever, revealing omnipresent miniature solar flares, dubbed 'campfires," near the surface.
Anything else? Well, it uses prehistoric cave pigment as a coating to withstand temperatures up to 520°C. The sun's pretty darn hot, you know.
So, what's happening now? The spacecraft's orbit is taking it behind the sun, and starting a few days ago the apparent angle, as seen from Earth, between Solar Orbiter and the sun started falling below 5 degrees.
NASA weighs options for additional Soyuz Mission to ISS
Tuesday, 09 February 2021 12:30 Write a comment
A rotating crew of NASA and international astronauts have called the International Space Station home for more than 20 years. To ensure a consistent U.S. presence on the space station through the years, NASA has implemented safeguards to ensure crew transportation is always available.
NASA now is considering obtaining a supplemental seat on the upcoming spring Soyuz crew rotation mission f NASA awards contract to launch initial elements for lunar outpost
Tuesday, 09 February 2021 12:30 Write a comment
NASA has selected Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, California, to provide launch services for the agency's Power and Propulsion Element (PPE) and Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO), the foundational elements of the Gateway. As the first long-term orbiting outpost around the Moon, the Gateway is critical to supporting sustainable astronauts missions under the agency's Ar Ozmens' SNC Dream Chaser spaceplane closer to commercial runway landing
Tuesday, 09 February 2021 12:30 Write a comment
Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC), the global aerospace and national security company owned by Eren and Fatih Ozmen, is a step closer to landing the world's first commercial spaceplane on U.S. soil. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) awarded the re-entry site license to Cape Canaveral Spaceport Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) in Florida at requ