Houston TX (SPX) Jan 12, 2021
As the International Space Station orbits Earth, its four pairs of solar arrays soak up the sun's energy to provide electrical power for the numerous research and science investigations conducted every day, as well as the continued operations of the orbiting platform. The space station is the springboard to NASA's Artemis missions to the Moon, a platform to test advanced technologies for h

Houston TX (SPX) Jan 13, 2021
With NASA astronaut Victor Glover monitoring aboard the International Space Station, an upgraded SpaceX cargo Dragon spacecraft undocked from the International Docking Adapter on the station's space-facing port of the Harmony module at 9:05 a.m. EST. It is the first undocking of a U.S. commercial cargo craft from the complex. Previous cargo Dragon spacecraft were attached and removed from

Washington DC (UPI) Jan 12, 2021
NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station are preparing new Astrobee flying robots to enhance science on the orbiting laboratory - a technology that could be vital to future deep space exploration. The cube-shaped machines float in the microgravity of orbit and use jets of compressed air to maneuver. Astrobees can be operated by the space station crew or by people on Earth

Beijing (XNA) Jan 13, 2021
China is creating a new line of rocket engines for its upcoming space missions, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) announced Tuesday. According to the state-owned satellite and rocket maker, progress has been made in key technologies for a hydrogen/oxygen high-thrust staged combustion cycle engine, which will serve the country's heavy-lift carrier rockets.

Berlin, Germany (SPX) Jan 13, 2021
This month marks the 220th anniversary of the discovery of the first asteroid. During the night of 1-2 January 1801, Giuseppe Piazzi, the director of Palermo Astronomical Observatory, noticed a 'star' on the shoulder of the bull-shaped constellation, Taurus. But the position of the star was changing each night. Piazzi had discovered Ceres, the largest body in the vast space between the planets M

Baltimore MD (SPX) Jan 13, 2021
How dark is the sky, and what does that tell us about the number of galaxies in the visible universe? Astronomers can estimate the total number of galaxies by counting everything visible in a Hubble deep field and then multiplying them by the total area of the sky. But other galaxies are too faint and distant to directly detect. Yet while we can't count them, their light suffuses space with a fe

Moscow (AFP) Jan 12, 2021
Russia's cosmonaut training centre said Tuesday it has begun vaccinating employees against the coronavirus ahead of future space missions. The press service of the Yuri Gagarin Training Centre told AFP that around 40 of its nearly 1,500 employees had received the first dose of Russia's homemade coronavirus vaccine Sputnik V. Named after famous Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first pe

Washington DC (UPI) Jan 6, 2021
For the first time, scientists have observed competition between magnetic orders from coupled sheets of atoms. The observations, described Wednesday in the journal Nature, promise new insights into the quantum qualities of two-dimensional materials. Ever since a pair of British researchers were awarded the Nobel Prize in 2010 for the discovery of graphene, material scientists, electrica

The month of December comes with holidays for many, but for the International Space Station and mission controls around the world, science never rests.

WASHINGTON — The private sector is coming out with new geospatial intelligence products and services faster than the government can figure out how to buy them. That means analysts need ways to procure commercial geoint “at a moment’s notice,” said David Gauthier, director of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency’s commercial and business operations group.