Massive underground instrument finds final secret of our sun's fusion
Tuesday, 15 December 2020 10:07A hyper-sensitive instrument, deep underground in Italy, has finally succeeded at the nearly impossible task of detecting CNO neutrinos (tiny particles pointing to the presence of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen) from our sun's core. These little-known particles reveal the last missing detail of the fusion cycle powering our sun and other stars. In results published Nov. 26 in the journal Natu
From NASA JPL's Mailroom to Mars and Beyond
Tuesday, 15 December 2020 10:07Don't tell Bill Allen he can't take risks. Allen was just 17 years old when he first set foot on the grounds of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to join the mailroom in the summer of 1981. Voyager had recently encountered Saturn, and the Lab was crawling with members of the media. "It was like walking into a football stadium in the middle of the touchdown. It was electric," he says.
UK 'comet chaser' to go where no probe has been before
Tuesday, 15 December 2020 10:07Thales Alenia Space, who have three sites in the UK and employ nearly 200 highly skilled engineers and scientists, have won the contract to design the mother ship for the Comet Interceptor mission, which will see one main spacecraft and two smaller robotic probes - built by the Japanese Space Agency - travel to an as-yet unidentified comet, and map it in three dimensions. Comets are what i
China prepares for return of lunar probe with moon samples
Tuesday, 15 December 2020 09:31China prepares for return of spacecraft with moon samples
Tuesday, 15 December 2020 09:31Long-term permafrost record details Arctic thaw
Tuesday, 15 December 2020 09:00Frozen Arctic soils are set to release vast amounts of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere as they continue to thaw in coming decades. Despite concerns that this will fuel future global warming, the scale and speed of this important climate process remain uncertain. To help address this knowledge gap, ESA-funded researchers have developed and released a new permafrost dataset – the longest, satellite-derived permafrost record currently available.
Satellite sensors could supply data for emissions trading systems
Tuesday, 15 December 2020 05:07SAN FRANCISCO – Satellite data could play a role in monitoring, reporting and verifying compliance with emissions trading systems also known as cap and trade, Stephanie La Hoz Theuer, a member of the International Carbon Action Partnership (ICAP) Secretariat, said at the virtual American Geophysical Union fall meeting.
Eyes on the Sky
Wednesday, 02 December 2020 03:10The Perseverance rover is equipped with a large suite of cameras-23 to be exact-which collectively enable a wide range of scientific investigations and engineering activities. Since the rover's touchdown in Jezero crater, these cameras have served as our eyes on the ground. In less than a year, the rover has already returned thousands of stunning images of local surface features, which hav
Onwards and Sidewards for Curiosity on Sol 3313
Wednesday, 02 December 2020 03:10The rover rarely drives in a straight line, and our recent drive took the "road less traveled" to investigate a bunch of boulders shed down from a cliff face off to the side of our expected traverse to the south. Why? Beneath the Greenheugh Pediment, the flat-lying, high-standing escarpment to the west, the scientists could see a unique layer with a convoluted texture. In our drive today,
Brief presence of water in Arabia Terra on Mars
Wednesday, 02 December 2020 03:10NAU PhD candidate Ari Koeppel, as part of a team of scientists from Northern Arizona and Johns Hopkins Universities, recently discovered that water was once present in a unique but brief manner in a region of Mars called Arabia Terra. Arabia Terra is in the northern latitudes of Mars. Named in 1879 by Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, this ancient land covers an area slightly large
Texas astronomers discover strangely massive black hole in Milky Way satellite galaxy
Wednesday, 02 December 2020 03:10Astronomers at The University of Texas at Austin's McDonald Observatory have discovered an unusually massive black hole at the heart of one of the Milky Way's dwarf satellite galaxies, called Leo I. Almost as massive as the black hole in our own galaxy, the finding could redefine our understanding of how all galaxies - the building blocks of the universe - evolve. The work is published in a rece
Record-breaking simulations of large-scale structure formation in the universe
Wednesday, 02 December 2020 03:10Current simulations of cosmic structure formation do not accurately reproduce the properties of ghost-like particles called neutrinos that have been present in the Universe since its beginning. But now, a research team from Japan has devised an approach that solves this problem. In a study published this month in SC '21: Proceedings of the International Conference for High Performance Comp
Rocket Lab closes acquisition of space hardware company Planetary Systems
Wednesday, 02 December 2020 03:10Rocket Lab USA, Inc. has closed the previously-announced transaction to acquire Planetary Systems Corporation (PSC), a Maryland-based spacecraft separation systems company, for $42 million in cash and 1,720,841 shares of the Company's common stock, plus the potential for an additional 956,023 shares of common stock for a performance earnout based on PSC's CY 2022 and 2023 financial results. Rock
SpaceX Starlink launch from Florida delayed to Thursday
Wednesday, 02 December 2020 03:10SpaceX's plan to launch 53 more Starlink spacecraft from Florida has been delayed a day to Thursday, as the company struggles with plans to develop a second generation of the communications satellites. SpaceX gave no immediate reason for the postponement. With the rescheduling, a Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to carry the satellites into orbit at 6:28 p.m. EST from Complex 40 at C
Rocket Lab readies Electron for lift-off in fastest launch turnaround yet
Wednesday, 02 December 2020 03:10Rocket Lab USA has revealed its next Electron mission is scheduled to take place during a launch window that opens on December 7, 2021, fewer than three weeks since Rocket Lab's most recent mission on November 18, 2021. These two missions for BlackSky occur 19 days apart and represent Rocket Lab's quickest turnaround in its launch history. The "A Data With Destiny" mission for BlackSky man