NASA moves forward with campaign to return Mars samples to Earth
Thursday, 17 December 2020 13:30
NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) are moving to the next phase in a campaign to deepen understanding of whether life ever existed on Mars and, in turn, better understand the origins of life on Earth.
NASA has approved the Mars Sample Return (MSR) multi-mission effort to advance to Phase A, preparing to bring the first pristine samples from Mars back to Earth. During this phase, the program will mature critical technologies and make critical design decisions, as well as assess industry partnerships.
The first endeavor of this campaign is in progress. NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover launched in July and is set to land on the Red Planet Feb. 18, 2021. The car-size rover will search for signs of ancient microbial life. Using a coring drill at the end of its robotic arm, Perseverance has the capability to gather samples of Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust), and hermetically seal them in collection tubes.
Juno spacecraft updates quarter-century Jupiter mystery
Thursday, 17 December 2020 13:30
Three things NASA learned from Mars InSight
Thursday, 17 December 2020 12:27
NASA's InSight spacecraft touched down Nov. 26, 2018, on Mars to study the planet's deep interior. A little more than one Martian year later, the stationary lander has detected more than 480 quakes and collected the most comprehensive weather data of any surface mission sent to Mars. InSight's probe, which has struggled to dig underground to take the planet's temperature, has made progress, too.
There was a time when the surfaces of Mars and Earth were very similar. Both were warm, wet, and shrouded in thick atmospheres. But 3 or 4 billion years ago, these two worlds took different paths. The mission of InSight (short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) has been to help scientists to compare Earth to its rusty sibling. Studying what the depths of Mars is made of, how that material is layered, and how quickly heat seeps out of it could help scientists better understand how a planet's starting materials make it more or less likely to support life.
China rolls out Long March 8 rocket for weekend test flight
Thursday, 17 December 2020 11:44
HELSINKI — China has rolled out a Long March 8 to the pad for the first launch of a rocket that will later be adapted for vertical landing and reuse.
Investigation confirms improperly connected cables caused Vega launch failure
Thursday, 17 December 2020 11:38
WASHINGTON — An independent investigation of a Vega launch failure in November confirmed that misconnected cables in the rocket’s upper stage doomed the mission and made recommendations to allow a return to flight in early 2021.
The European Space Agency announced Dec.
New satellite propulsion test facility to propel UK into new space age
Thursday, 17 December 2020 09:58
A new gold standard national rocket test facility will soon open its doors, the Science Minister Amanda Solloway has announced 18 December.
The new centre will allow UK companies and academics to fire up and test state-of-the-art space propulsion engines at up to 1.5kN in high-altitude vacuum, an equivalent test altitude of 140,000ft. It will cement the international reputation of the West SpaceX aborts launch attempt of U.S. government spy satellite
Thursday, 17 December 2020 09:58
SpaceX on Thursday postponed the company's second spy satellite mission for the U.S. government due to a slightly high pressure reading in an upper stage liquid oxygen tank on the Falcon 9 rocket.
The countdown stopped at 1 minute, 53 seconds before the planned 9:45 a.m. EST liftoff from Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. SpaceX said it plans another attempt Friday morning. Major upgrade to Fermilab accelerator complex gets green light
Thursday, 17 December 2020 09:58
The U.S. Department of Energy has formally approved the scope, schedule and cost of the PIP-II project at DOE's Fermilab.
The approval, known as Critical Decision 2 or CD-2, is an endorsement of Fermilab's detailed, formal plan for building the PIP-II accelerator, a high-power, superconducting machine that will become the heart of the laboratory accelerator complex.
PIP-II, the only New type of atomic clock keeps time even more precisely
Thursday, 17 December 2020 09:58
Atomic clocks are the most precise timekeepers in the world. These exquisite instruments use lasers to measure the vibrations of atoms, which oscillate at a constant frequency, like many microscopic pendulums swinging in sync. The best atomic clocks in the world keep time with such precision that, if they had been running since the beginning of the universe, they would only be off by about half Not so fast!: controlling the speed of light bullets
Thursday, 17 December 2020 09:58
Though it sounds like something straight out of science fiction, controlling the speed of light has in fact been a long-standing challenge for physicists. In a study recently published in Communications Physics, researchers from Osaka University generated light bullets with highly controllable velocities.
According to Albert Einstein's principle of relativity, the speed of light is constan Turksat 5A satellite to 'secure' Turkey's orbital rights
Thursday, 17 December 2020 09:58
Turksat 5A, Turkey's new communications satellite that is expected to be launched in the near future, will secure the country's orbital rights for the long term, Jean-Marc Nasr, the head of space systems at Airbus Defence and Space, said on Monday.
"Turksat 5A will secure the orbital rights of Turkey," Nasr told the agency.
According to the Airbus official, the latest-generation sate 'Chaotic' way to create insectlike gaits for robots
Thursday, 17 December 2020 09:58
Researchers in Japan and Italy are embracing chaos and nonlinear physics to create insectlike gaits for tiny robots - complete with a locomotion controller to provide a brain-machine interface.
Biology and physics are permeated by universal phenomena fundamentally grounded in nonlinear physics, and it inspired the researchers' work.
In the journal Chaos, from AIP Publishing, the grou Microchip adds COTS 64Mbit flash memory device to its radiation-tolerant lineup
Thursday, 17 December 2020 09:58
To reduce the time, cost and risk of developing spaceflight-qualified systems, designers may start with Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) devices that can later be replaced by their space-qualified, radiation-tolerant equivalent parts available in plastic or ceramic packages featuring the same pinout distribution.
Microchip Technology Inc. has announced a radiation-tolerant, 64 Megabit (Mbit NASA releases best practices handbook to help improve space safety
Thursday, 17 December 2020 09:58
NASA has released the first iteration of its Spacecraft Conjunction Assessment and Collision Avoidance Best Practices Handbook to share information on best practices for coordinating in-orbit activity in a safe and responsible manner. The agency aims for these best practices to bolster stability, reduce current and future operational risks, and contribute to a sustainable space environment for f Unibap becomes a member of AWS Partner Network for SpaceCloud
Thursday, 17 December 2020 09:58
Unibap AB (publ) announces AWS integration with Unibap space-focused hardware and software that will enable container and serverless compute with lower latencies and less cost. This simplifies data management for satellite operators and application developers.
The collaboration will allow customers to access AWS services and capabilities in the space environment for autonomous edge process