ESA, CNSA heads discuss future space plans
Tuesday, 06 April 2021 12:53
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HELSINKI — The heads of the European Space Agency and China National Space Administration held a video call April 1 to outline respective plans for the coming years.
Lunar Gateway will maintain its orbit with a 6 kW ion engine
Tuesday, 06 April 2021 12:12 Write a comment
When NASA sends astronauts back to the moon as part of the Artemis Program, they will be taking the long view. Rather than being another "footprints and flags" program, the goal is to create a lasting infrastructure that will ensure a "sustained program of lunar exploration." A major element in this plan is the Lunar Gateway, an orbital habitat that astronauts will use to venture to and from the surface.
The first step in establishing the Gateway is the deployment of two critical modules—the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) and the Power and Propulsion Element (PPE). According to a recent update, NASA (along with Maxar Technologies and Busek Co.) recently completed a hot-fire test of the PPE propulsion subsystem—the first of many that will ensure that the PPE and HALO will be ready for launch by 2024.
This propulsion subsystem is a cluster of Hall effect thrusters (aka ion engines), which use electromagnetic fields to accelerate ionized gas through engine nozzles to generate thrust. In this case, the engine system is a 6-kilowatt solar electric propulsion (SEP) concept that incorporates Maxar-built electronics and a xenon feed system with four Busek-built BHT-600 thrusters.
Introducing ESA Agenda 2025
Tuesday, 06 April 2021 11:45 Write a comment
ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher has worked with our Member States to define new priorities and goals for ESA for the coming years.
Telesat completing financing for Lightspeed constellation
Tuesday, 06 April 2021 11:00 Write a comment
WASHINGTON — Telesat expects to finalize the financing for its Lightspeed broadband constellation in the next few months, along with contracts to launch the fleet of nearly 300 satellites.
The long-term sustainability of space
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How do we tackle the debris problem, to secure the sustainability of space long term? Origins of life could have started with DNA-like XNAs
Tuesday, 06 April 2021 08:48 Write a comment
Nagoya University scientists in Japan have demonstrated how DNA-like molecules could have come together as a precursor to the origins of life. The findings, published in the journal Nature Communications, not only suggest how life might have begun, but also have implications for the development of artificial life and biotechnology applications.
"The RNA world is widely thought to be a stag In Russia, the legend of cosmonaut Gagarin lives on
Tuesday, 06 April 2021 08:48 Write a comment
Sixty years after he became the first person in space, there are few figures more universally admired in Russia today than Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.
His smiling face adorns murals across the country. He stands, arms at his sides as if zooming into space, on a pedestal 42.5 metres (140 feet) above the traffic flowing on Moscow's Leninsky Avenue. He is even a favourite subject of tattoos. From Sputnik-1 to Sputnik V: Russian scientific achievements
Tuesday, 06 April 2021 08:48 Write a comment
Russia boasts a rich history of scientific invention across a wide variety of fields, from the Sputnik satellite to the coronavirus vaccine of the same name.
On the 60th anniversary of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becoming the first man in space, here are some of the country's most notable scientific and technological achievements:
- Sputnik satellite -
In one of the most significan 60 years after Gagarin, Russia lags in the space race
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A station on the moon! A mission to Venus! A next generation spacecraft!
Sixty years after the Soviet Union made history by launching Yuri Gagarin into space on April 12, 1961, Russia continues to have lofty extraterrestrial ambitions, but its ability to realise them is more down to earth.
Project after project has been announced and then delayed, as grand designs fall victim to funding Mapping North Carolina's ghost forests from 430 miles up
Tuesday, 06 April 2021 08:48 Write a comment
Emily Ury remembers the first time she saw them. She was heading east from Columbia, North Carolina, on the flat, low-lying stretch of U.S. Highway 64 toward the Outer Banks. Sticking out of the marsh on one side of the road were not one but hundreds dead trees and stumps, the relic of a once-healthy forest that had been overrun by the inland creep of seawater.
"I was like, 'Whoa.' No leav Watch the Agenda 2025 media briefing
Tuesday, 06 April 2021 07:35 Write a comment
Director General Josef Aschbacher will present ESA Agenda 2025 at 1400 CEST (1200 GMT) on Wednesday 7 April 2021. ESA Agenda 2025 is a vision for ESA’s future prepared in consultation with the ESA Member States. It sets out strategic priorities and goals for the Agency, such as strengthening the ESA–EU relationship, boosting green and digital commercialisation, developing space for safety and security, addressing critical programme challenges and implementing the ESA transformation.
Watch the presentation and questions from the media on ESA WebTV from 1400 CEST.
SpaceFund Venture Capital Announces First Close of Second Fund
Tuesday, 06 April 2021 05:36 Write a comment
SpaceFund announced it has reached and surpassed the planned first close of $5 million for its $20 million BlastOff Fund today. The Houston and Austin-based company says commitments to the fund have reached $9 million as of Monday morning.
"We are thrilled to see how many investors are placing their trust in our team," said SpaceFund founder Rick Tumlinson. "We spent a lot of time slowly a RS-25 rocket engines return to launch Artemis missions
Tuesday, 06 April 2021 05:36 Write a comment
The rocket engine with one of the most storied histories in spaceflight, the RS-25, is returning to space for a second act - this time to send humans on the Artemis missions to explore the Moon.
As the space shuttle main engine, the RS-25 has a proven record of launching 135 missions spanning over three decades. At the end of the shuttle program in 2011, 16 RS-25 engines that helped build Burnt-out comet covered with talcum powder
Tuesday, 06 April 2021 05:36 Write a comment
The world's first ground-based observations of the bare nucleus of a comet nearing the end of its active life revealed that the nucleus has a diameter of 800 meters and is covered with large grains of phyllosilicate; on Earth large grains of phyllosilicate are commonly available as talcum powder. This discovery provides clues to piece together the history of how this comet evolved into its curre SwRI's 100-kg small satellite platform added to NASA's RDSO catalog
Tuesday, 06 April 2021 05:36 Write a comment
NASA has selected Southwest Research Institute's 100 kg-class small satellite (SmallSat) platform to be listed in the Rapid Spacecraft Development Office (RSDO) IV catalog used by the U.S. government to rapidly contract for flight-proven spacecraft. The Southwest Space Platform-100 (SwSP-100) is now available through the $6 billion, indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) Rapid Spacecraft