Washington DC (UPI) Dec 23, 2020
NASA has shown what it will look like when its Perseverance rover touches down on Mars, a challenging sequence that the agency describes as "7 minutes of terror." The Perseverance rover was launched in the summer and is scheduled to arrive on Mars in February. Once it reaches Mars' atmosphere on its way to Jezero Crater, it must slow down from its speed of 12,000 mph in a span of

La Jolla CA (SPX) Dec 31, 2020
Chemists at Scripps Research have made a discovery that supports a surprising new view of how life originated on our planet. In a study published in the chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie, they demonstrated that a simple compound called diamidophosphate (DAP), which was plausibly present on Earth before life arose, could have chemically knitted together tiny DNA building blocks called deo

Beijing (XNA) Dec 28, 2020
China sent a new remote sensing satellite into space from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China at 11:44 p.m. Sunday (Beijing Time). The satellite, Yaogan-33, was launched aboard a Long March-4C rocket and entered the planned orbit successfully. It was the 357th flight mission of the Long March carrier rocket series. The mission also sent a micro and nano technology

Washington DC (UPI) Dec 22, 2020
Congress has added $1.3 billion into the Missile Defense Agency's fiscal 2021 budget, in excess of what the agency asked for in February. The agency had requested $9.13 billion, a $1.27 billion decrease from last year's budget, but also submitted a list of unfunded requirements that totaled nearly $1 billion. In the bill, lawmakers describe a "concerning" disconnect between the M

Washington DC (UPI) Dec 22, 2020
The Army's under-development Extended Range Cannon Artillery system hit a target on the nose from 43 miles away. Brig. Gen. John Rafferty, who is overseeing the branch's Long-Range Precision Fires modernization program, told reporters an Excalibur extended-range guided artillery shell hit a target at Arizona's Yuma Proving Ground on Saturday. "I don't think our adversaries have t

Arlington VA. (AFNS) Dec 25, 2020
Guardians from around the world gathered virtually Dec. 11 to reflect on their contributions and to recognize high achieving individuals for their performance during the U.S. Space Force's first year of operation. The formal recognition was led by Secretary of the Air Force Barbara M. Barrett, Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. "Jay" Raymond and Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Space For

Washington DC (AFNS) Dec 25, 2020
This past week, the United States Space Force turned one year old. In the months leading up to the anniversary, the infant military branch started to form an image all its own. In July, the newly instituted Space Force unveiled its logo and new motto, Semper Supra, "Always Above." The motto was reminiscent of other military branches, like that of the Marine Corps "Semper Fidelis," meaning "Alway

Greenbelt MD (SPX) Dec 30, 2020
NASA has approved two heliophysics missions to explore the Sun and the system that drives space weather near Earth. Together, NASA's contribution to the Extreme Ultraviolet High-Throughput Spectroscopic Telescope Epsilon Mission, or EUVST, and the Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer, or EZIE, will help us understand the Sun and Earth as an interconnected system. Understanding the physics th

Charlottesville VA (SPX) Dec 23, 2020
The supersharp radio "vision" of the National Science Foundation's Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) has revealed previously unseen details in a jet of material ejected at three-quarters the speed of light from the core of a galaxy some 12.8 billion light-years from Earth. The galaxy, dubbed PSO J0309+27, is a blazar, with its jet pointed toward Earth, and is the brightest radio-emitting blazar ye

Bonn, Germany (SPX) Dec 23, 2020
The European Commission will provide 15 million euro in funding to a consortium of 37 astronomical institutions from the European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom (UK). The goal of the Opticon-RadioNet Pilot Project (ORP) is to enable and facilitate scientists to share between the partners observing time at optical and radio telescopes. Similar programs have existed before: the RadioNet p