Week in images: 03 - 07 May 2021
Friday, 07 May 2021 12:13
Week in images: 03 - 07 May 2021
Discover our week through the lens
NASA Wallops May 8 rocket launch may be visible in eastern United States
Friday, 07 May 2021 11:55
A mission to explore energy transport in space using a NASA suborbital sounding rocket launching May 8, 2021, from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia may provide a brief light show for residents of the eastern United States and Bermuda.
The mission is scheduled for no earlier than 8:02 p.m. EDT with a 40-minute launch window, Saturday, May 8. Backup launch days run through May 16. The launch may be visible, weather permitting, in much of the eastern United States from the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi River.
A four-stage Black Brant XII rocket will be used for the mission that includes the release of barium vapor that will form two green-violet clouds that may be visible for about 30 seconds. The barium vapor is not harmful to the environment or public health
The mission, called the KiNETic-scale energy and momentum transport eXperiment, or KiNet-X, is designed to study a very fundamental problem in space plasmas, namely, how are energy and momentum transported between different regions of space that are magnetically connected?
Star formation is triggered by cloud-cloud collisions, study finds
Friday, 07 May 2021 11:48
Op-ed | Big Data gaining ground with Earth Observation operators
Friday, 07 May 2021 11:32
Big Data is boosting Earth Observation demand, creating new applications and changing traditional business models. As a disruptive innovation, it keeps changing the way EO data is being used.
Technologies are no longer the only driver of innovation; this is about how, with innovations being combined, the ecosystem is rapidly maturing — and so are the solutions.
Sierra Nevada Corporation to advertise space spinoff on Saturday Night Live
Friday, 07 May 2021 11:00
WASHINGTON — Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) is taking a novel approach to publicizing the spinoff of its space business: buying ads linked to Elon Musk’s appearance on the television show “Saturday Night Live.”
SNC will run “pre-roll” ads on clips from Musk’s appearance on the show May 8 on YouTube.
Virgin Orbit schedules next LauncherOne mission for June
Friday, 07 May 2021 09:53
WASHINGTON — Virgin Orbit has scheduled its next LauncherOne mission for June, carrying a mix of defense and commercial cubesats.
Virgin Orbit said May 6 that it will launch six cubesats on its next flight of its LauncherOne vehicle in June, flying out of the Mojave Air and Space Port in California.
Higher Power in space | Thomas Pesquet & Coldplay
Friday, 07 May 2021 09:00
Video:
00:06:56
To celebrate the premiere of Coldplay's latest single 'Higher Power’, the band linked up for an extraterrestrial video chat with French ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet, who is currently on a six-month mission on board the International Space Station. A specially recorded performance of Higher Power - featuring dancing alien holograms - was beamed up to Thomas, who gave the track its very first play on board the Station. The song’s premiere followed a conversation which took in similarities between life on tour and life on the Space Station, how planet Earth looks from space and its fragility;
China wants to send spacecraft to edge of solar system to mark 100th year of PRC
Friday, 07 May 2021 08:37
Chinese scientists are evaluating the feasibility of a project to send spacecraft to the edge of the solar system, said Wu Weiren, chief designer of China's lunar exploration program.
According to the project, the Chinese spacecraft will cover a distance about 100 times than that between the sun and Earth by 2049, when the People's Republic of China celebrates its 100th founding anniversar BlackSky demonstrates growth and scalability with planned launch of additional satellites
Friday, 07 May 2021 08:37
BlackSky, a leading provider of real-time geospatial intelligence and global monitoring services that recently announced a planned business combination with Osprey Technology Acquisition Corp., has revealed it expects to launch two satellites on Rocket Lab's twentieth mission, "Running Out of Toes." The launch, which is scheduled to take place no earlier than May 15, 2021, will deploy BlackSky's Coldplay beam new song into space in chat with French astronaut
Friday, 07 May 2021 07:43
Coldplay gave new meaning to the idea of a single launch, playing new song "Higher Power" for the first time during a video link-up with French astronaut Thomas Pesquet.
Pesquet spoke with the British group from the International Space Station.
"We sent you some music, because right now we aren't able to play for anyone on Earth, so we thought we would just play for you," singer Chris Martin said before playing the song late Thursday.
"This is the premiere for the whole... galaxy," he added, saying the song was about "trying to find the astronaut in all of us, the person who can do amazing things.
China says 'extremely low' risk of damage on Earth from rocket re-entry
Friday, 07 May 2021 07:19
China said Friday the risk of damage on Earth from a rocket which fell out of orbit after separating from Beijing's space station was "extremely low", after the United States warned it could crash down onto an inhabited area.
Military experts in the US expect the body of the Long March 5B rocket to fall to the surface some time around Saturday or Sunday, but warned it was difficult to predict where it will land and when.
But Beijing downplayed the risk of any damage on Friday.
"The probability of causing harm to aviation activities or (on people and activities) on the ground is extremely low," foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said.
China says 'extremely low' risk of damage from rocket debris
Friday, 07 May 2021 07:19 China said Friday the risk of damage on Earth from a rocket which fell out of orbit after separating from Beijing's space station was "extremely low", after the United States warned it could crash down onto an inhabited area.
Military experts in the US expect the body of the Long March 5B rocket to fall to the surface some time around Saturday or Sunday, but warned it was difficult to predict where it will land and when.
But Beijing downplayed the risk of any damage on Friday.
"The probability of causing harm to aviation activities or (on people and activities) on the ground is extremely low," foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said.
Earth from Space: Morbihan, France
Friday, 07 May 2021 07:00
The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over Morbihan – a French department in the south of Brittany.
Starliner completes full space station mission simulation
Friday, 07 May 2021 03:35
NASA and Boeing recently completed an integrated mission dress rehearsal of Starliner's uncrewed Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2) mission to the International Space Station for NASA's Commercial Crew Program. The campaign conducted largely inside Boeing's Houston-based Avionics and Software Integration Lab (ASIL) culminated in a five-day end-to-end mission simulation known as the ASIL Mission Rehea "I felt really heavy:" astronauts describe returning to Earth on SpaceX capsule
Friday, 07 May 2021 03:35
Four astronauts just returned from the International Space Station described on Thursday their reentry into Earth's atmosphere and ocean splashdown after more than 160 days in space.
A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying the crew back to Earth splashed down off Florida early Sunday in NASA's first nighttime ocean landing in more than 50 years.
"There was a point where I was just saying