Autonomous driving on intelligent road at Europe’s edge
Monday, 18 January 2021 08:41An ESA-supported effort put an intelligent road up in Finnish Lapland through its paces, assessing its suitability for testing autonomous vehicles in some of Europe’s most challenging driving conditions.
China issues document to boost global cooperation on lunar samples
Monday, 18 January 2021 07:39China published its Regulations on the Management of Lunar Samples on Monday morning, aiming to improve scientific research and international cooperation. Developed by the China National Space Administration, the document has nine chapters and 37 clauses, governing the storage, management and use of lunar samples brought back by the country's Chang'e 5 mission. According to the regul
X-Rays surrounding 'Magnificent 7' may be traces of sought-after particle
Monday, 18 January 2021 07:39A new study, led by a theoretical physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), suggests that never-before-observed particles called axions may be the source of unexplained, high-energy X-ray emissions surrounding a group of neutron stars. First theorized in the 1970s as part of a solution to a fundamental particle physics problem, axion
A 'super-puff' planet like no other
Monday, 18 January 2021 07:39The core mass of the giant exoplanet WASP-107b is much lower than what was thought necessary to build up the immense gas envelope surrounding giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn, astronomers at Universite de Montreal have found. This intriguing discovery by Ph.D. student Caroline Piaulet of UdeM's Institute for Research on Exoplanets (iREx) suggests that gas-giant planets form a lot more
Back to Venus armed with laboratory findings
Monday, 18 January 2021 07:39Venus's impenetrable atmosphere has long made it difficult to conduct a thorough investigation of our neighbouring planet. In a step forward, by conducting laboratory experiments scientists from the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) have now developed a way of determining the nature of the planet's surface using new instruments from orbit. The entire surfac
Simulating evolution to understand a hidden switch
Monday, 18 January 2021 07:39Computer simulations of cells evolving over tens of thousands of generations reveal why some organisms retain a disused switch mechanism that turns on under severe stress, changing some of their characteristics. Maintaining this "hidden" switch is one means for organisms to maintain a high degree of gene expression stability under normal conditions. Tomato hornworm larvae are green in warm
Dark Energy Survey makes public catalog of nearly 700 million astronomical objects
Monday, 18 January 2021 07:39The Dark Energy Survey, a global collaboration including the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, and the National Science Foundation's NOIRLab, has released DR2, the second data release in the survey's seven-year history. DR2 is the topic of sessions today and tomorrow at the 237th Meeting of the American Astronomical
String of stars in Milky Way are related
Monday, 18 January 2021 07:39The Milky Way houses 8,292 recently discovered stellar streams - all named Theia. But Theia 456 is special. A stellar stream is a rare linear pattern - rather than a cluster - of stars. After combining multiple datasets captured by the Gaia space telescope, a team of astrophysicists found that all of Theia 456's 468 stars were born at the same time and are traveling in the same direction a
Milky Way's Defensive Halo Blocks Incoming Gas Cloud
Monday, 18 January 2021 07:39How are galaxies able to keep forming stars and planets? Astronomers from Texas Christian University are using the Green Bank Telescope to reveal more about this process, studying high-velocity clouds that are being pulled into our Milky Way galaxy by its gravitational pull. Stars and planets require large amounts of gas to form, and galaxies can run out of this cosmic building material un
The Milky Way does the Wave
Monday, 18 January 2021 07:39In results announced this week at the 237th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society, scientists from the Sloan Digital Sky survey present the most detailed look yet at the warp of our own Galaxy. "Our usual picture of a spiral galaxy is as a flat disk, thinner than a pancake, peacefully rotating around its center," said Xinlun Cheng of the University of Virginia, the lead author of th
Statement on Satellite Constellations by German Astronomical Society
Monday, 18 January 2021 07:39The German Astronomical Society (AG), the German association of amateur astronomers (VdS) and the Society of German-Speaking Planetariums (GDP) comment on the rapid increase in the number of satellites in the night sky. Artificial satellites have significant impact on the perception of the natural starry sky and the exploration of our universe. Astronomical research institutes, observatori
Sintavia expands rocket manufacturing with two M4K-4 Printers from AMCM GmbH
Monday, 18 January 2021 07:39Sintavia, LLC, a designer and additive manufacturer of critical thermal components for the Aerospace, Defense, and Space industry, reports it has acquired two M4K-4 printers from AMCM GmbH of Starnberg, Germany. Each of the two new M4K-4s, which are stretched versions of the commercially successful EOS M400-4 printer, uses four 1kW lasers to print single-un
Key modules for China's next space station ready for launch
Monday, 18 January 2021 07:39Three major components of China's space station program have passed technical and quality assessments and are ready for upcoming missions, the China Manned Space Agency said. Experts from the agency, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp reviewed the design, construction and test reports on the space station's Tianhe core module, the Tianzhou 2 car
Astronaut vlog: space food and fitness
Sunday, 17 January 2021 15:00English Astronaut vlog: space food and fitness
ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer is preparing for his mission to the International Space Station, scheduled for launch in late 2021. This mission is known as Cosmic Kiss.
In this video log from his current training base at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, USA, Matthias shows a space food tasting session and shares how astronauts maintain their fitness for a safe return to Earth.
Astronauts exercise for two hours a day, six days a week while on the International Space Station to combat muscle and bone loss caused by an extended stay
Cosmic beasts and where to find them
Sunday, 17 January 2021 13:25Two giant radio galaxies have been discovered with South Africa's powerful MeerKAT telescope. These galaxies are thought to be amongst the largest single objects in the Universe. The discovery has been published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society .