Los Angeles CA (SPX) Feb 05, 2025
Three months after lifting off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the Europa Clipper spacecraft still has 1.6 billion miles (2.6 billion kilometers) ahead before it settles into Jupiter's orbit in 2030. On arrival, it will capture detailed views of Europa's icy terrain. In the meantime, a pair of specialized cameras called star trackers is busy photographing deep space to confirm the c

London, UK (SPX) Feb 05, 2025
Physicists have carried out an advanced simulation that they believe exposes fresh details about an elusive occurrence, potentially shaping the Universe's eventual destiny. The research centers on a concept called false vacuum decay, a scenario in which our Universe's apparent stability might be only temporary. Originally proposed in quantum field theory around five decades ago, the idea s

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Feb 05, 2025
Coordinate your actions, unify your approach, and collaborate to fulfill a shared objective. This "pep talk" succinctly captures how NASA's latest swarm-based breakthrough operates. Known as Distributed Spacecraft Autonomy (DSA), it allows each satellite to make decisions independently while uniting with fellow spacecraft to pursue collective goals, all free from human oversight. Within NA

Paris, France (SPX) Feb 04, 2025
The European Union Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA) has released the very first GNSS and Secure SATCOM User Technology Report, offering a unified resource that addresses two central space-based capabilities. This new publication builds upon earlier GNSS User Technology and Secure SATCOM Market and User Technology studies, presenting an extensive review of the most recent innovations

Image: Artist's view of Europe's launcher family from 2024 onwards

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Back in 2023, we reported on Solar Orbiter’s discovery of tiny jets near the Sun’s south pole that could be powering the solar wind. The team behind this research has now used even more data from the European Space Agency’s prolific solar mission to confirm that these jets exist all over dark patches in the Sun’s atmosphere, and that they really are a source of not only fast but also slow solar wind.

The newfound jets can be seen in this sped-up video as hair-like wisps that flash very briefly, for example within the circled regions of the

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Using data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission, scientists have found a huge exoplanet and a brown dwarf. This is the first time a planet has been uniquely discovered by Gaia’s ability to sense the gravitational tug or ‘wobble’ the planet induces on a star. Both the planet and brown dwarf are orbiting low-mass stars, a scenario thought to be extremely rare.

Read more.

Access the related animations: Gaia-4b / Gaia-5b

Access the related broadcast quality video material.

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Feb 04, 2025
A team of researchers led by Dr. Sofia Sheikh from the SETI Institute, in collaboration with the Characterizing Atmospheric Technosignatures project and the Penn State Extraterrestrial Intelligence Center, investigated whether an extraterrestrial society with technology akin to ours might detect Earth and the evidence of humanity. They sought to identify which signals would be visible and how fa

London UK (SPX) Feb 04 2025
A space-based effort could soon uncover the nature of dark matter, one of the universe's most perplexing forces. Although invisible, this substance composes nearly 85 percent of cosmic mass, challenging scientists for decades. Now, a group at the University of Southampton has outlined a strategy to track dark matter by measuring faint disturbances in zero gravity. Researchers plan to fire