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Camera captures the Southern Pinwheel galaxy in glorious detail
The Dark Energy Camera (DECam), which was originally designed for the Dark Energy Survey, has captured one of the deepest images ever taken of Messier 83, a spiral galaxy playfully known as the Southern Pinwheel. Built by the US Department of Energy, DECam is mounted on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), a Program of NSF’s NOIRLab.
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New technique used to discover how galaxies grow
Dwarf galaxy UGC 5288 (seen here in pink) is 16 million light-years from Earth. It is surrounded by a huge disk of hydrogen gas (purple) that has not been involved in the galaxy’s star-formation processes and may be primordial material left over from the galaxy’s formation. Credit: B. Saxton from data provided by Van Zee, NOAO, NRAO/AUI/NSF

For decades, space and ground telescopes have provided us with spectacular images of galaxies. These building blocks of the universe usually contain several million to over a trillion stars and can range in size from a few thousand to several hundred thousand light-years across.

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Tricky Terrain: Helping to Assure a Safe Rover Landing
Mars 2020’s Perseverance rover is equipped with a lander vision system based on terrain-relative navigation, an advanced method of autonomously comparing real-time images to preloaded maps that determine the rover’s position relative to hazards in the landing area. Divert guidance algorithms and software can then direct the rover around those obstacles if needed. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

After a nearly seven-month journey to Mars, NASA's Perseverance rover is slated to land at the Red Planet's Jezero Crater Feb.

Op-ed | In defense of regulation

Sunday, 07 February 2021 17:34
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SN8 upon landing

Steve Blank’s op-ed of Feb. 5, “The FAA and SpaceX,” demands an informed rebuttal. Public debate over the appropriate level of regulation within any industry is appropriate in our democracy. However, Mr. Blank’s arguments lack grounding in the history and nature of private space activity regulation and he erroneously conflates that mission with the FAA’s primary task of regulating the safest transportation system in human history.

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How times have changed since the Apollo era. Within the space of a few days, two space missions from China and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), respectively, are set to reach Mars. The UAE's Hope mission will go into orbit around Mars on February 9. The next day, the Chinese Tianwen-1 mission – an orbiter and lander—will swing into orbit, with a predicted landing date sometime in May.

It is a very big moment for both countries. Hope is the first interplanetary mission by an Arab nation ever. And if China succeeds, it will be the first country ever to visit and land on Mars on its first try. The odds are stacked against them with nearly 50% of all Mars missions failing. China already lost a Mars orbiter mission (Yinghuo-1) back in 2011.

But before the missions can start doing science, tense moments await. As they arrive at the planet, they need to trigger a burn of their engines just at the right time to slow the probes down so they can be captured by Mars' gravitational field. Given the large distance from Earth, this needs to be carried out automatically by the probe.

Tianwen-1

If all goes well, the orbiter Tianwen, which means "Questions to Heaven" and the yet unnamed will attempt to measure Mars's climate and "ionosphere", a layer of electrically charged particles surrounding the planet.

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Tracking sea-level change

In November 2020, the Copernicus Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite was launched into orbit from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, US. Now, months later, the satellite has successfully passed what is known as the ‘in-orbit verification phase’, where its equipment is switched on and the instruments’ performance is checked.

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SAN FRANCISCO – Xenesis is adopting an usual business model in its campaign to establish an optical communications constellation.

The Illinois startup is signing revenue-sharing agreements with key suppliers, including satellite component manufacturer Space Micro, Geost, a firm focused on sensors and electro-optics, and optical system specialist PlaneWave Instruments.

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Press Release N° 3–2021

For the first time in 11 years, ESA is looking for new astronauts. These recruits will work alongside ESA’s existing astronauts as Europe enters a new era of space exploration.

Isotropic Systems raises $42 million

Sunday, 07 February 2021 11:17
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isotropic terminal

WASHINGTON — Isotropic Systems raised $42 million to continue development of broadband terminals for use by a wide range of satellite systems in a round led by satellite operator SES.

Isotropic announced Feb. 8 the new round, including equity investment as well as grant funding from the British government.

Happy new Mars year

Sunday, 07 February 2021 08:38
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Happy new Mars year Image: Happy new Mars year
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Next stop Mars: 3 spacecraft arriving in quick succession
In this Monday, July 20, 2020 file photo, men watch the launch of the "Amal" or "Hope" space probe at the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Center in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
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Lockheed Martin Shetland launch

WASHINGTON — ABL Space Systems will conduct a launch for Lockheed Martin from a new spaceport in the Shetland Islands, fulfilling an agreement with the British government announced in 2018.

Lockheed said Feb. 7 that ABL will perform a launch of its RS1 rocket from the Shetland Space Centre, a spaceport to be developed on the island of Unst in the Shetlands, in 2022.

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WASHINGTON — The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency wants to hear from the space industry about their capabilities to manufacture large structures on the moon.

This is a new project that DARPA announced Feb. 5 called “Novel Orbital and Moon Manufacturing, Materials and Mass-efficient Design.

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Dubai (AFP) Feb 7, 2021
The first Arab space mission, the UAE's "Hope" probe, is expected to reach Mars' orbit on Tuesday, making it the first of three spacecraft to arrive at the Red Planet this month. The United Arab Emirates, China and the United States all launched projects to Mars last July, taking advantage of a period when the Earth and Mars are nearest. If succesful, the wealthy Gulf state will become t
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Dubai (AFP) Feb 7, 2021
When Sarah al-Amiri was a child growing up in Abu Dhabi with a fascination for space, her young country seemed light years away from reaching for the stars. Now the 34-year-old is a government minister and one of the drivers of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) ambitious project behind the "Hope" probe that is due to reach the orbit of Mars on Tuesday. As a youngster poring over images of f
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