Space Force joins U.S. Intelligence Community
Monday, 11 January 2021 02:16The U.S. Space Force was designated the 18th member of the U.S. Intelligence Community in a ceremony featuring John Ratcliffe, National Intelligence director, the branch announced on Monday. The new service branch, founded in 2019, joins a group of government intelligence agencies and subordinate organizations that work separately and collectively to conduct intelligence activities in s
SEAKR demonstrates DARPA Pit Boss hardware on-orbit in 9 months
Monday, 11 January 2021 02:16SEAKR Engineering, Inc. (SEAKR) is pleased to announce it realized on-orbit technology demonstration of Pit Boss supercomputing processing hardware in 9 months as part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Blackjack Program. Pit Boss is an autonomous, collaborative, distributed space-based enterprise designed to self-task, process, and distribute tactically relevant informatio
Umbra Drops "Lab" and Prepares for Launch
Monday, 11 January 2021 02:16The satellite intelligence company will now become "Umbra synthetic aperture radar satellite." Umbra's rebranding marks the beginning of the company's preparation of its first commercial satellite launches throughout 2021. The company said the simplified name reflects the evolution of its business focus from "a research and development laboratory" towards a "commercial satellite constellation op
Roman Space Telescope could image 100 Hubble ultra deep fields at once
Monday, 11 January 2021 02:16In 1995, the Hubble Space Telescope stared at a blank patch of the sky for 10 straight days. The resulting Deep Field image captured thousands of previously unseen, distant galaxies. Similar observations have followed since then, including the longest and deepest exposure, the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. Now, astronomers are looking ahead to the future, and the possibilities enabled by NASA's upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
Dynetics achieves critical NASA milestone and delivers key data on lunar lander program
Monday, 11 January 2021 02:16Dynetics, a wholly owned subsidiary of Leidos, has submitted its proposal for Option A of the Human Landing System (HLS) for NASA's Artemis Program. The Dynetics team has also completed the HLS Continuation Review, a critical milestone during the 10-month base period, which NASA will use to assess progress on HLS hardware development and program plans. At the Continuation Review, Dynetics
A Tale of Planetary Resurrection
Monday, 11 January 2021 02:16Years after its detection, astronomers have learned that a planet called KOI-5Ab orbits in a triple-star system with a skewed configuration. Shortly after NASA's Kepler mission began operations back in 2009, it identified what was thought to be a planet about the size of Neptune. Called KOI-5Ab, the planet, which was the second new planet candidate to be found by the mission, was ultimately for
A rocky planet around one of our galaxy's oldest stars
Monday, 11 January 2021 02:16"They should have sent a poet," says Ellie Arroway in the film Contact as, suspended in outer space, she gazes upon a spiral galaxy. Almost all of the planets discovered to date (including the solar system planets) are confined to the plane of the Milky Way, unable to glimpse such a sweeping vista of our galaxy. However, astronomers at the University of Hawai?i Institute for Astronomy (IfA) usin
Astronomers find evidence for planets shrinking over billions of years
Monday, 11 January 2021 02:16A team of astronomers led by University of Hawai?i Institute for Astronomy (IfA) graduate student Travis Berger has shown that an intriguing class of Neptune-sized planets shrinks over billions of years. From centuries of studying the planets within our solar system, astronomers have wondered how planets form and evolve to become the ones we observe them today. One of the most surprising f
Astronomers measure enormous planet lurking far from its star
Monday, 11 January 2021 02:16Scientists aren't usually able to measure the size of gigantic planets, like Jupiter or Saturn, which are far from the stars they orbit. But a UC Riverside-led team has done it. The planet is roughly five times heavier than Jupiter, hence its nickname GOT 'EM-1b, which stands for Giant Outer Transiting Exoplanet Mass. Though it is nearly 1,300 light years away from Earth, GOT 'EM-1b, or Ke
Arecibo observatory helps find possible 'first hints' of low-frequency gravitational waves
Monday, 11 January 2021 02:16Data from Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico has been used to help detect the first possible hints of low-frequency disturbances in the curvature of space-time. The results were presented at the 237th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, which was held virtually, and are published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Arecibo Observatory is managed by the University of Central Flo
New Space Telescope Will Reveal Unseen, Dynamic Lives of Galaxies
Monday, 11 January 2021 02:16NASA has selected the University of Arizona to lead one of its four inaugural Astrophysics Pioneers missions. With a $20 million cost cap, the Aspera mission will study galaxy evolution with a space telescope barely larger than a mini fridge. The telescope will allow researchers to observe galaxy processes that have remained hidden from view until now.
NOAA proposes future geostationary constellation with East, West and Center satellites
Sunday, 10 January 2021 19:50SAN FRANCISCO – NOAA’s National Satellite, Data and Information Service is recommending flying three satellites over the United States in the satellite constellation that will follow the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite R Series (GOES-R).
In addition, to operating satellites in orbits similar to those of the current GOES East and GOES West satellites, NOAA recommends placing a third spacecraft over the center of the United States, Pam Sullivan, GOES-R system program director, said Jan.
Researchers find Mars has a Chandler wobble
Sunday, 10 January 2021 17:50A combined team of researchers from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology and the Royal Observatory of Belgium, has found evidence that Mars has a Chandler wobble. In their paper published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the group describes their study of decades of data from Mars probes and what it showed them.
Approximately a century ago, astronomer Seth Carlo Chandler discovered that imperfectly round objects (such as planets) sometimes spin off their axis for periods of time. The phenomenon has come to be known as the Chandler wobble, and has been documented for planet Earth, which veers from its axis for distances up to 30 feet in a pattern that repeats approximately every 433 days. Researchers have suggested that other planets likely have a Chandler wobble, but until now, it has never been observed because measuring it on the planet scale requires precise measurements over many years. In this new effort, the researchers obtained the right kind of data from space probes that orbited Mars over many years: The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey.