Copernical Team
Psyche's 3.6 billion kilometre journey to the centre of the Earth via it's namesake
Psyche was the Greek goddess of the soul, born a mere mortal and later married to Eros, the God of love. Who knows why the Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis gave her name to a celestial object he observed one night in 1852?
Psyche was only the 16th "asteroid" ever discovered: inhabitants of the Solar System that were neither the familiar planets nor the occasional visitors known as c TRIDENT drill integrated into VIPER lunar rover
Engineers at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, together with the team from Honeybee Robotics in Altadena, California, are gearing up to incorporate the latest addition to NASA's first robotic Moon rover, VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover). The newly arrived instrument is the TRIDENT drill, an acronym for The Regolith Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrain.
TRIDENT i Lockheed Martin Ventures backs HawkEye 360 with $10M in latest funding round
HawkEye 360 Inc., a front-runner in the provision of space-based radio frequency (RF) data and analytics, has concluded its Series D-1 funding round by securing an additional $10 million. This latest financial injection brings the total amount raised in the Series D-1 to $68 million. Key investors in this second closing were Lockheed Martin Ventures, the investment wing of Lockheed Martin Corpor Planetary Scientist Alan Stern Joins Virgin Galactic for Research Mission
Dr. Alan Stern, a leading planetary scientist and the Associate Vice President of Southwest Research Institute's (SwRI) Space Science Division, will fly aboard the VSS Unity, Virgin Galactic's commercial spaceship, on November 2. The upcoming flight is not just a personal milestone for Stern but is set as a precursor to a NASA-funded Virgin Galactic suborbital flight, during which he will execut Rocket Lab Moves Into System Integration Phase for NASA's Mars Mission
Rocket Lab USA, Inc. has entered a crucial phase in its collaboration with NASA on the ESCAPADE mission, a project aiming to study Mars' hybrid magnetosphere. The company announced that the twin spacecraft for the mission have moved into the system integration phase, aligning with a launch scheduled for 2024.
Spearheaded by Dr. Rob Lillis at the University of California, Berkeley's Space S Space Development Agency partners with SpiderOak for OrbitSecure
Space cybersecurity firm SpiderOak has secured an Other Transactional Authority agreement with the Space Development Agency (SDA). The contract aims to explore the integration of SpiderOak's OrbitSecure software suite into the Space Force's Rapid Resilient Command and Control initiative. This partnership aspires to bolster the cybersecurity of command and control systems as the Space Force conti Star trackers emerge as new tool for high-precision space debris detection
Neuraspace, a trailblazer in space traffic management (STM), has entered into a collaborative effort with Arcsec, a well-known supplier of star trackers. The alliance aims to employ Arcsec's star trackers in the detection and analysis of space debris, a move expected to bring a sea change in how space debris is managed.
The collaboration will facilitate Neuraspace in furnishing its clients Chinese satellite cluster utilizes InSAR technology for advanced terrain mapping
China's PIESAT-1, a unique constellation of remote-sensing satellites arranged in a wheel-like formation, has successfully acquired high-precision topographic data using multi-baseline interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) technology. This achievement marks China's first in-orbit application of this advanced mapping system, according to an announcement made by the Aerospace Informatio NASA's Psyche asteroid mission: A 3.6 billion kilometer 'journey to the center of the Earth'
Psyche was the Greek goddess of the soul, born a mere mortal and later married to Eros, the God of love. Who knows why the Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis gave her name to a celestial object he observed one night in 1852?
Psyche was only the 16th "asteroid" ever discovered: inhabitants of the solar system that were neither the familiar planets nor the occasional visitors known as comets. Today we know the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter contains millions of space rocks, ranging in size from the dwarf planet Ceres down to tiny pebbles and grains of dust.
Among all these, Psyche is still special. With an average diameter of around 226km, the potato-shaped planetoid is the largest "M-type" asteroid, made largely of iron and nickel, much like Earth's core.
Last week NASA launched a spacecraft to rendezvous with Psyche. The mission will take a six-year, 3.6 billion kilometer journey to gather clues that Earth scientists like me will interrogate for information about the inaccessible interior of our own world.
How NASA's Europa Clipper will survive its trip to Jupiter's hostile moon
If life exists elsewhere in the solar system, it may well reside in the ocean of Jupiter's icy moon Europa.
The mysterious world appears to have the necessary ingredients for life as we know it. Beneath its frozen exterior is a single body of water that's so deep it may hold more liquid than all of the oceans on Earth. Europa is believed to have enough carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and other key elements to form the building blocks of living organisms. And scientists suspect the heat generated as the moon is stretched and squeezed by Jupiter's gravity would provide enough energy to sustain any creatures that might be there.
That's why NASA is building Europa Clipper.
The spacecraft will blast off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida a year from now and reach its destination in 2030.