Copernical Team
Koons on the Moon—sculptures to be placed on lunar surface
American pop artist Jeff Koons is to send sculptures to the Moon later this year on a spacecraft blasting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, his gallery said Tuesday.
Koons, one of the most celebrated and expensive living artists, is famed for kitsch pieces such as "Ballon Dog" and "Rabbit," and his work is exhibited in galleries around the world.
His latest project "Moon Phases" consists of physical sculptures that will be left permanently on the lunar surface in a transparent, thermally coated miniature satellite, the Pace Gallery in New York said.
Koons will also make unique digital versions of the sculptures—marking his entry into the lucrative new world of NFTs (non-fungible tokens).
The sculptures will travel on the "Nova-C Lunar Lander," designed by private company Intuitive Machines, and will be placed on the surface of the Moon in the Oceanus Procellarum.
Astronomy's ten-year wish list: Big money, bigger telescopes and the biggest questions in science
It takes expensive tools to learn about the universe, but projects like the Very Large Array for radio astronomy in New Mexico and the Chandra X-ray Observatory, which orbits Earth, have pushed scientific knowledge forward in ways that would not have been possible without these instruments. Every 10 years, astronomers and astrophysicists outline priorities for the hardware they need in the decadal survey on astronomy and astrophysics.
'Bubble-through' nuclear engine might be a future NASA workhorse
A cutting-edge nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) rocket engine using what's called centrifugal liquid fuel bubble-through could one day be a ticket for NASA to go directly into deep space.
Under an NTP research contract for the Space Nuclear Propulsion Project Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), a part of the University of Alabama System, is leading a collaboration of universities across the nation including the University of Rhode Island (URI), Drexel University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Pennsylvania State University and the University of Michigan (U-M) to research the concept.
Juice’s journey and Jupiter system tour
Video:
00:04:25
ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, Juice, is set to embark on an eight-year cruise to Jupiter starting April 2023. The mission will investigate the emergence of habitable worlds around gas giants and the Jupiter system as an archetype for the numerous giant planets now known to orbit other stars.
This animation depicts Juice’s journey to Jupiter and highlights from its foreseen tour of the giant planet and its large ocean-bearing moons. It depicts Juice’s journey from leaving Earth’s surface in a launch window 5–25 April 2023 and performing multiple gravity assist flybys in the inner Solar System, to
ESA supports Indian lunar and solar missions
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is launching two pioneering scientific spacecraft this year, one to study the Sun, and one to land on the Moon – the nation’s first soft landing on another celestial body.
ESA’s global deep-space communication antennas will provide essential support to both missions every step of the way, tracking the spacecraft, pinpointing their locations at crucial stages, transmitting commands and receiving ‘telemetry’ and valuable science data.
Ariane 6, Vega-C, microlaunchers: ESA looks to full range of launch options for European institutional missions
ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher today underscored the Agency’s determination to ensure that ESA’s work in space is not derailed by the tragic events in Ukraine. Mr Aschbacher stresses that work continues to assess the impact on each ongoing programme, including on missions affected by Roscosmos' withdrawal of Soyuz launch operations from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana.
Satellites around the Moon come another step closer
ESA is going to the Moon – in collaboration with its international partners – and seeks to build a lasting lunar link to enable sustainable space exploration.
How a major volcanic eruption paved the way for the rise of the dinosaurs
The supercontinent Pangaea, which was a combination of today's continents, broke apart at the end of the Triassic period due to large-scale volcanic activity. This volcanic activity was thought to be the most likely cause of the fourth mass extinction, but studies were inconclusive and provided no explanation of the environmental changes that occurred at that time.
Therefore, the research Sols 3425-3427: Vuggy Buggy
I learned a new word today: vug. Vugs are small cavities or pits on a rock surface and the rock in our workspace today was noticeably "vuggy." Particularly, the triangular rock face in the bottom center portion of this Navcam image.
This vuggy rock in the "Hartle Loup" outcrop seemed particularly unique relative to the other rocks on the Greenheugh Pediment that we've seen to-date. We chos