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Iodine thruster used to change the orbit of a small satellite for the first time ever

For the first time ever, a telecommunications satellite has used an iodine propellant to change its orbit around Earth.

The small but potentially disruptive innovation could help to clear the skies of space junk, by enabling tiny satellites to self-destruct cheaply and easily at the end of their missions, by steering themselves into the atmosphere where they would burn up.

Sardinia, Italy

Thursday, 21 January 2021 09:00
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Sardinia, the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, is featured in this false-colour image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission. Image: Sardinia, the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, is featured in this false-colour image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.

Earth from Space: Sardinia

Thursday, 21 January 2021 09:00
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Video: 00:03:23

This week's edition of the Earth from Space programme features a Copernicus Sentinel-2 image of Sardinia, the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.

See also Sardinia, Italy to download the image.

Google to shut down Loon

Thursday, 21 January 2021 03:16
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WASHINGTON — Google announced Jan. 21 it is shutting down Loon, a venture to provide wireless connectivity by balloon that has been seen as both complementary to and competitive with satellite networks.

In a blog post, Astro Teller, head of X, the advanced projects or “moonshot factory” division of Google parent company Alphabet, announced that Loon will wind down operations in the next several months.

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WASHINGTON — A recent NASA mission successfully demonstrated the performance of a non-toxic “green” propellant, creating opportunities for its use in a wide range of future spacecraft.

NASA flew the Green Propellant Infusion Mission (GPIM) spacecraft as one of the payloads on the Space Test Program 2 mission that launched on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy in June 2019.

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WASHINGTON — Northrop Grumman announced Jan. 21 it completed a static firing of the strap-on solid booster it developed for United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan Centaur rocket. 

The test fire of the extended length 63-inch-diameter Graphite Epoxy Motor (GEM 63XL) took place on Thursday at the company’s facility in Promontory, Utah.

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WASHINGTON — As many as 116 graduates of the U.S. Air Force Academy this year will join the U.S. Space Force. That is an increase from last year when 86 graduates went to the space service.

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WASHINGTON — The chief executive of  Virgin Orbit’s sister company VOX Space called on the Biden administration to continue the National Space Council that former president Donald Trump revived in 2017.

“Keeping the National Space Council intact is a good thing to do,” Mandy Vaughn said Jan.

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NASA mission to test technology for satellite swarms
V-R3x CubeSats undergo a functional performance test in a lab at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. Credit: NASA/Ames Research Center/Dominic Hart

A NASA mission slated for launch on Friday will place three tiny satellites into low-Earth orbit, where they will demonstrate how satellites might track and communicate with each other, setting the stage for swarms of thousands of small satellites that can work cooperatively and autonomously.

Zac Manchester, an assistant professor in Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute and the 's principal investigator, said small satellites have grown in popularity over the last 10 years, as some companies already are launching hundreds into orbit to perform tasks such as Earth imaging and weather forecasting.

These satellites now are individually controlled from the ground. As swarms grow bigger and more sophisticated, Manchester noted, they will need to respond to commands almost as a single entity.

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Astronomers estimate Titan's largest sea is 1,000-feet deep
An artistic rendering of Kraken Mare, the large liquid methane sea on Saturn’s moon Titan. Credit: NASA/John Glenn Research Center

Far below the gaseous atmospheric shroud on Saturn's largest moon, Titan, lies Kraken Mare, a sea of liquid methane. Cornell University astronomers have estimated that sea to be at least 1,000-feet deep near its center—enough room for a potential robotic submarine to explore.

After sifting through data from one of the final Titan flybys of the Cassini mission, the researchers detailed their findings in "The Bathymetry of Moray Sinus at Titan's Kraken Mare," which published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

"The depth and composition of each of Titan's seas had already been measured, except for Titan's largest sea, Kraken Mare—which not only has a great name, but also contains about 80% of the moon's surface liquids," said lead author Valerio Poggiali, research associate at the Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science (CCAPS).

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3-D printing to pave the way for moon colonization
Figure 1. From left to right: lunar regolith simulants, resulting paste, and stereolithographic printed samples. Credit: Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology

A research team from the Skoltech Center for Design, Manufacturing and Materials (CDMM) comprising 2nd year Ph.D. student Maxim Isachenkov, Senior Research Scientist Svyatoslav Chugunov, Professor Iskander Akhatov, and Professor Igor Shishkovsky has prepared an extensive review on the use of Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies (also known as 3-D-printing) in crewed lunar exploration. Their paper published in the journal Acta Astronautica contains a comprehensive description of the geological composition of the lunar surface and the properties of lunar soil (lunar regolith) and its simulants, detailing their mineralogy, morphology, and chemical composition, in the light of their future use as feedstock for 3-D-printing on the moon surface.

The authors evaluated different 3-D-printing techniques presented in literature in terms of their suitability for in-situ manufacturing and maintainability, with focus on the adaptation of AM methods to low gravity, limited energy consumption, dimension and weight constraints of AM components delivered to the moon, scalability of AM technologies, low-gravity performance of 3-D-printing methods, and autonomy of AM applications.

Rocks show Mars once felt like Iceland

Wednesday, 20 January 2021 14:21
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Rocks show Mars once felt like Iceland
Weathering of sedimentary rock at Gale Crater likely happened under Iceland-like temperatures more than 3 billion years ago, when water still flowed on Mars. Rice University researchers compared data collected by the Curiosity rover, correlated with conditions at various places on Earth, to make their determination. Credit: NASA

Once upon a time, seasons in Gale Crater probably felt something like those in Iceland. But nobody was there to bundle up more than 3 billion years ago.

The ancient Martian crater is the focus of a study by Rice University scientists comparing data from the Curiosity rover to places on Earth where similar geologic formations have experienced weathering in different climates.

Oldest carbonates in the solar system

Wednesday, 20 January 2021 14:21
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Oldest carbonates in the solar system
Flensburg meteorite with black fusion crust: Parts of the fusion crust were lost during the flight through the atmosphere. The small fragment, weighing 24,5 grams, is about 4.5 billion years old. Credit: A. Bischoff / M. Patzek, University of Münster.

A meteorite that fell in northern Germany in 2019 contains carbonates which are among the oldest in the solar system; it also evidences the earliest presence of liquid water on a minor planet. The high-resolution Ion Probe—a research instrument at the Institute of Earth Sciences at Heidelberg University—provided the measurements. The investigation by the Cosmochemistry Research Group led by Prof. Dr. Mario Trieloff was part of a consortium study coordinated by the University of Münster with participating scientists from Europe, Australia and the U.S.

Juno maps water ice across northern Ganymede

Wednesday, 20 January 2021 12:41
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Juno maps water ice across northern Ganymede
The Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper aboard the Juno spacecraft captured these images of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede on 26 December 2019. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM

Jupiter's moon Ganymede is the largest planetary satellite in the solar system. It's also one of the most intriguing: Ganymede is the only moon with its own magnetic field, it is the most differentiated of all moons, and it likely possesses a subsurface ocean of liquid water. It was studied by the early Jupiter flybys made by the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft, but our understanding today rests largely on observations made by NASA's Galileo orbiter from 1995 to 2003.

Mura et al. now report some of the first in situ observations of Ganymede since the end of the Galileo mission. They used the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) on board NASA's Juno spacecraft to take images and spectra of the moon's north polar region.

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WASHINGTON — The European Commission announced Jan. 20 it will award contracts to Airbus Defence and Space and Thales Alenia Space to build an initial set of next-generation Galileo navigation satellites, shutting out incumbent manufacturer OHB.

Airbus and Thales will each build six of the second-generation Galileo satellites under contracts that will be formally signed at the end of January.

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