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Year in images 2020

Tuesday, 22 December 2020 13:39
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This image is one of the most photogenic examples of the many turbulent stellar nurseries the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has observed during its 30-year lifetime. The portrait features the giant nebula NGC 2014 and its neighbour NGC 2020 which together form part of a vast star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, approximately 163 000 light-years away.

Our year through the lens: a selection of our favourite images for 2020

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Image: Space bauble
Credit: Technical University Darmstadt

Deck the halls with space-based bubbles!

Here is a festive bauble you will not see on Earth: a bubble produced by the Multiscale Boiling experiment, known affectionately as Rubi.

In this image, are pulling the bubble upwards and making it spherical, producing not only a cool image but also cool insights into the boiling process.

Understanding how boiling behaves in weightlessness is imperative because gravity plays an important role. Without gravity, boiling takes place in and produces larger bubbles. This has allowed scientists to observe and measure effects that are too fast and too small on Earth.

The experiment is also installed with an electrode to observe the effect of an electric field on the bubbles, enabling scientists to observe and quantify the effect of external forces.

"Boiling is an extremely efficient way of getting rid of excess heat. This research could therefore provide very valuable information for improving the in space as well as in terrestrial applications," says ESA project scientist Daniele Mangini.

With this insight and more accurate calculations of the boiling process, products such as laptops can be improved and made more compact.

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VALETTA, Malta —  Through a novel approach to testing, the European Space Agency’s Clean Space initiative is assisting in the development of satellite components that are designed for demise, an approach to satellite development that advocates for the safe disposal of spacecraft by destructive atmospheric reentry.

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Season's greetings

Season's greetings from the European Space Agency

Europe's Spaceport prepares for Ariane 6

Tuesday, 22 December 2020 09:40
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Ariane 6 assembly building

Europe' Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana is gearing up for the arrival of Ariane 6, Europe's new generation launch vehicle.

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Washington DC (SPX) Dec 23, 2020
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is holding a public scoping period for the draft Environmental Assessment (EA) related to plans by SpaceX to apply for licenses for suborbital and orbital launches of its Starship/Super Heavy project at its facility in Boca Chica, Texas. The scoping period will help the FAA in determine the scope of issues for analysis in the draft EA. The FAA requ
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Pasadena CA (JPL) Dec 23, 2020
Marvels of engineering, the rover's sample tubes must be tough enough to safely bring Red Planet samples on the long journey back to Earth in immaculate condition. The tubes carried in the belly of NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover are destined to carry the first samples in history from another planet back to Earth. Future scientists will use these carefully selected representatives of M
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Alicante, Spain (SPX) Dec 23, 2020
EMXYS and the Royal Observatory of Belgium have been selected by the European Space Agency to provide a gravimeter for the Juventas spacecraft that will land on asteroid Dimorphos as part of the European Space Agency's planetary defence programme. EMXYS and the Royal Observatory of Belgium will provide the GRASS instrument that will make measurements on the gravity field of the asteroid Di
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Sydney, Australia (The Conversation) Dec 23, 2020
In the northern sky in December is a beautiful cluster of stars known as the Pleiades, or the "seven sisters". Look carefully and you will probably count six stars. So why do we say there are seven of them? Many cultures around the world refer to the Pleiades as "seven sisters", and also tell quite similar stories about them. After studying the motion of the stars very closely, we believe
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Washington DC (SPX) Dec 22, 2020
Researchers at the George Washington University, together with researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the deep-tech venture startup Optelligence LLC, have developed an optical convolutional neural network accelerator capable of processing large amounts of information, on the order of petabytes, per second. This innovation, which harnesses the massive parallelism of l
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Quebec City, Canada (SPX) Dec 17, 2020
An international research team involving Professor Federico Rosei of the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) has demonstrated a novel process to modify the structure and properties of graphene, a one atom thick carbon. This chemical reaction, known as photocycloaddition, modifies the bonds between atoms using ultraviolet (UV) light. The results of the study were recently
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Arlington VA (AFNS) Dec 22, 2020
From the publicly available view on the outside, the birth and creation of the nation's newest military service was going well; there was general agreement as to the need for the new service, its strategic importance and how it would fit in to the nation's existing and sprawling military enterprise. Hidden, however, was a level of bureaucratic gamesmanship and "churn," worrisome enough tha
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Washington DC (SPX) Dec 22, 2020
Vessels known to have crew that are subject to forced labor behave in systematically different ways to the rest of the global fishing fleet, reveals a new paper published in the scientific journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The discovery was used to build a first-of-its-kind model to identify and predict vessels at high risk of engaging in these abuses. The study fou
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Washington DC (SPX) Dec 21, 2020
A DARPA network technology program recently concluded field tests demonstrating novel software that bridges multiple disparate radio networks to enable communication between incompatible tactical radio data links - even in the presence of hostile jamming. The technology is transitioning to Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) and the Marine Corps, which plans to put the software on a software repr
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London, UK (SPX) Dec 18, 2020
Researchers are using Cold War spy satellite images to explore changes in the environment, including deforestation in Romania, marmot decline in Kazakhstan and ecological damage from bombs in Vietnam. Ecologists have harnessed new advances in image processing to improve analysis of declassified US military intelligence photographs and detect previously unseen changes in the environment. Dr
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