New York NY (SPX) Apr 21, 2021
On April 21, 1908, near Earth's North Pole, the Arctic explorer Frederick Albert Cook scrawled in his diary a memorable phrase: "We were the only pulsating creatures in a dead world of ice." These words may soon take on new significance for humankind in another dead world of hidden ice, submerged beneath the red sand of its frigid deserts. This dead world is Mars, and the desert is the planet's

San Antonio TX (SPX) Apr 21, 2021
On Jan. 9, 2020, NASA's Lucy mission officially announced that it would be visiting not seven, but eight asteroids. As it turns out, Eurybates, one of the asteroids along Lucy's path, has a small satellite. Though searching for satellites is one of the mission's central goals, finding these tiny worlds before Lucy is launched gives the team the opportunity to investigate their orbits and p

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Our planet is surrounded by spacecraft helping us study our changing climate, save lives following disasters, deliver global communication and navigation services and help us answer important scientific questions.

But these satellites are at risk. Accidental collisions between objects in space can produce huge clouds of fast-moving debris that can spread and damage additional satellites with cascading effect.

In this animation, find out how teams at ESA’s European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, take action to keep satellites safe after receiving an alert warning of a possible collision between an active satellite and a piece of

Boston MA (SPX) Apr 22, 2021
NASA's Perseverance rover has been marking milestones on Mars since landing on the Red Planet in February. Its latest historic accomplishment is the first creation of oxygen from carbon dioxide in the thin Mars atmosphere. Mission time is measured in sols, or Martian days. Oxygen production was achieved early in the evening of April 20, or early morning on Sol 60 in Jezero Crater. MOXIE (M

Pasadena CA (JPL) Apr 22, 2021
The growing list of "firsts" for Perseverance, NASA's newest six-wheeled robot on the Martian surface, includes converting some of the Red Planet's thin, carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere into oxygen. A toaster-size, experimental instrument aboard Perseverance called the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) accomplished the task. The test took place April 20, the 60th Martian

Paris (ESA) Apr 22, 2021
On 23 April 2001, ESA astronaut Umberto Guidoni first set foot, or hand, on the International Space Station, making him the first European to visit and work the orbiting outpost. Since then, the Space Station has grown immensely, as have the number of Europeans to have worked in it, together with the science experiments performed in orbit. When Umberto arrived, he flew on the Space Shuttle

Baltimore MD (SPX) Apr 22, 2021
Before planets around other stars were first discovered in the 1990s, these far-flung exotic worlds lived only in the imagination of science fiction writers. But even their creative minds could not have conceived of the variety of worlds astronomers have uncovered. Many of these worlds, called exoplanets, are vastly different from our solar system's family of planets. They range from star-

Pasadena CA (JPL) Apr 22, 2021
Astronomers using data from NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) telescopes have released a new all-sky map of the outermost region of our galaxy. Known as the galactic halo, this area lies outside the swirling spiral arms that form the Milky Way's recognizable central disk and is sparsely populated with stars. Though the halo may appear mostly empty, it is also predicted to contain a massive re

Perth, Australia (SPX) Apr 22, 2021
Astronomers have discovered a pulsar - a dense and rapidly spinning neutron star sending radio waves into the cosmos - using a low-frequency radio telescope in outback Australia. The pulsar was detected with the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) telescope, in Western Australia's remote Mid West region. It's the first time scientists have discovered a pulsar with the MWA but they believ

Toulouse, France (SPX) Apr 22, 2021
Airbus has passed an important milestone for the OneSat flexible satellite product line, with the Final Design Review successfully achieved with customers and space agencies. The fully reconfigurable OneSat product line features major innovations and disruptive technologies including the latest digital processing and active antennas enabling several thousand beams. In addition, to meet the