San Francisco (AFP) July 16, 2024
Elon Musk on Tuesday said he will move the headquarters of SpaceX and X to Texas after a California law blocked schools from forcing teachers to notify parents about changes to a student's gender identity. "This is the final straw," Musk said on X a day after California governor Gavin Newsom signed the bill that fired up the already fraught culture wars in a tumultuous US election year.

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Jul 17, 2024
Astrobotic has advanced its efforts to create a lunar power grid by beginning a summer-long test campaign for its VSAT Optimized for Lunar Traverse (VOLT). The VOLT rover, designed to traverse the Moon's surface, features a vertical solar array to harness solar energy for charging various lunar assets such as habitats, rovers, and scientific instruments, particularly at the lunar south pole.

Paris, France (SPX) Jul 17, 2024
Thirty years ago, on July 16, 1994, astronomers witnessed the dramatic collision of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet with Jupiter, sparking significant interest in planetary defence and raising the question: "Could we prevent such an event from happening to Earth?" Today, ESA's Space Safety programme takes a significant step towards answering this question. The programme has been authorized to b

Ithica NY (SPX) Jul 17, 2024
A new study of radar experiment data from the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn has yielded fresh insights related to the makeup and activity of the liquid hydrocarbon seas near the north pole of Titan, the largest of Saturn's 146 known moons. The key takeaway: Using data from several bistatic radar experiments, a Cornell University-led research team was able to separately analyze and esti

Paris, France (SPX) Jul 17, 2024
Teledyne e2v has announced the successful space qualification of its 8 GB DDR4 memory chip, expanding its edge compute solutions for space applications. This marks the completion of Teledyne e2v's initial DDR4 qualification, including all necessary upscreening activities such as temperature cycling, construction analysis, C-SAM, preconditioning, Temperature Humidity Bias, and radiation testing.

Sydney, Australia (SPX) Jul 17, 2024
The University of Western Australia's TeraNet, a network of optical ground stations focused on high-speed space communications, has successfully captured laser signals from a German satellite in low Earth orbit. This achievement signals a potential 1,000-fold increase in communication bandwidth between space and Earth. Led by Associate Professor Sascha Schediwy from the UWA node at the Int

A student team testing a new approach to satellite propulsion came to the flattest floor in Europe – based at ESA’s ESTEC technical centre in the Netherlands – which is used to reproduce the experience of weightless free-floating in two dimensions instead of three. 

Satellite navigation is not just about travel directions; its applications extend to search and rescue operations, agriculture, autonomous vehicles, sports and perhaps surprisingly, even health. ESA's NAVISP programme supports European companies in the creation of satnav-powered solutions with all sorts of applications – among them, emergency response and healthcare.