Arlington VA (AFNS) Dec 22, 2020
From the publicly available view on the outside, the birth and creation of the nation's newest military service was going well; there was general agreement as to the need for the new service, its strategic importance and how it would fit in to the nation's existing and sprawling military enterprise. Hidden, however, was a level of bureaucratic gamesmanship and "churn," worrisome enough tha

Quebec City, Canada (SPX) Dec 17, 2020
An international research team involving Professor Federico Rosei of the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) has demonstrated a novel process to modify the structure and properties of graphene, a one atom thick carbon. This chemical reaction, known as photocycloaddition, modifies the bonds between atoms using ultraviolet (UV) light. The results of the study were recently

Washington DC (SPX) Dec 22, 2020
Researchers at the George Washington University, together with researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the deep-tech venture startup Optelligence LLC, have developed an optical convolutional neural network accelerator capable of processing large amounts of information, on the order of petabytes, per second. This innovation, which harnesses the massive parallelism of l

Sydney, Australia (The Conversation) Dec 23, 2020
In the northern sky in December is a beautiful cluster of stars known as the Pleiades, or the "seven sisters". Look carefully and you will probably count six stars. So why do we say there are seven of them? Many cultures around the world refer to the Pleiades as "seven sisters", and also tell quite similar stories about them. After studying the motion of the stars very closely, we believe

Alicante, Spain (SPX) Dec 23, 2020
EMXYS and the Royal Observatory of Belgium have been selected by the European Space Agency to provide a gravimeter for the Juventas spacecraft that will land on asteroid Dimorphos as part of the European Space Agency's planetary defence programme. EMXYS and the Royal Observatory of Belgium will provide the GRASS instrument that will make measurements on the gravity field of the asteroid Di

Pasadena CA (JPL) Dec 23, 2020
Marvels of engineering, the rover's sample tubes must be tough enough to safely bring Red Planet samples on the long journey back to Earth in immaculate condition. The tubes carried in the belly of NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover are destined to carry the first samples in history from another planet back to Earth. Future scientists will use these carefully selected representatives of M

Washington DC (SPX) Dec 23, 2020
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is holding a public scoping period for the draft Environmental Assessment (EA) related to plans by SpaceX to apply for licenses for suborbital and orbital launches of its Starship/Super Heavy project at its facility in Boca Chica, Texas. The scoping period will help the FAA in determine the scope of issues for analysis in the draft EA. The FAA requ

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2020 has been another year of progress for ESA. The launch and commissioning of Solar Orbiter heralded a new era of space science, whilst Eutelsat Konnect revolutionised telecommunications. The new Vega SSMS began a cost-effective new launch system for small satellites, deploying exciting new technologies such as PhiSat and ESAIL. ESA’s Earth Observation activities were also showcased, with the launch of Sentinel-6 and an international effort to monitor the environmental and economic impact of COVID-19. Gaia and Cheops yielded new findings about our universe; ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano returned successfully from orbit. With a lunar programme agreement

The optical and infrared instruments of Euclid, ESA's mission to study dark energy and dark matter, have passed the qualification and acceptance review and are now fully integrated into the spacecraft's payload module. This marks an important step forward in the assembly of the Euclid space telescope, which is scheduled for launch in 2022.

The visible and infrared instruments are crucial to measure the shapes and distances of billions of galaxies. This will enable scientists to reconstruct 10 billion years of cosmic history, and investigate the mysterious dark matter and dark energy that are thought to dominate the universe.

This image shows Euclid's payload module, which consists of a silicon baseplate supporting the telescope and two instruments. The visual imager is visible towards the top, which, with more than 600 megapixels, will be one of the biggest cameras in space. The near-infrared spectrometer and photometer is to the right. The telescope's primary and secondary mirrors are hidden from view and inside the white baffle with gold multi-layer insulation, underneath the baseplate in this orientation.

“NASA has impressed the nation with our resilience and persistence during the pandemic,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine.