Key negotiator Norway sees 'positive signals' ahead of plastic talks
Thursday, 26 September 2024 12:52
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In the single week that world leaders convened for high-level UN talks in New York, nearly 100,000 water bottles' worth of microplastics swirled through the city's air, posing known and still unknown risks to human health.
"We talk a lot about plastic in the marine environment, but it's all around," Anne Beathe Tvinnereim, the Norwegian international development minister who is helping lead Turbulence in the Sun’s corona
Thursday, 26 September 2024 12:07 Write a comment
Video:
00:00:29
Solar wind is a never-ending stream of charged particles coming from the Sun. Rather than a constant breeze, this wind is rather gusty. As solar wind particles travel through space, they interact with the Sun's variable magnetic field, creating chaotic and fluctuating motion known as turbulence.
This video confirms something long suspected: the turbulent motion of solar wind begins very close to the Sun, inside the solar atmosphere known as the corona. Small disturbances affecting solar wind in the corona are carried outward and expand, generating turbulent flow further out in space.
By blocking out direct light coming from
Look inside ESA’s Hera asteroid mission
Thursday, 26 September 2024 11:52 Write a comment
Video:
00:02:02
Hera is ESA's first planetary defence mission, set to probe the lingering mysteries of a unique target among the 1.3 million known asteroids of our Solar System: the first body to have had its orbit shifted by human action.
Spacecraft are among the most complex machines ever built, so need to be broken down into sets of subsystems, and this video shows how ESA and European industry put together Hera.
Hera’s chemical propulsion subsystem is what moves it through space, while its electrical power subsystem supplies and regulates electrical power throughout the spacecraft as needed. Its data handling subsystem
Hydrosat extends reach in Latin America
Thursday, 26 September 2024 11:00
Katie Wall, True Anomaly – Leading Women in Space
Thursday, 26 September 2024 09:24
Katie Wall, True Anomaly Director of Government Affairs — Leading Women in Space
Thursday, 26 September 2024 09:24Blue Origin tests New Glenn upper stage
Thursday, 26 September 2024 09:20
Japan launches IGS Radar 8 reconnaissance satellite with penultimate H-2A rocket
Thursday, 26 September 2024 08:27
Catalysing new space ventures with ESA’s Earth Observation Commercialisation Forum
Thursday, 26 September 2024 08:25 Write a comment
Taking place at KAP Europa in Frankfurt, Germany, from 27 to 28 November 2024, the second ESA Earth Observation Commercialisation Forum will bring together stakeholders from the Earth observation and space commercialisation sectors, including end users, space industry players, entrepreneurs, private and public investors and policymakers to discuss and promote commercial opportunities in Earth observation.
The event is an important part of ESA’s broader strategy to enhance the economic return from Earth observation investments to ensure that space technology contributes to sustainable economic growth.
Juice spacecraft forming wake in solar wind
Thursday, 26 September 2024 08:16 Write a comment
A spacecraft in flight cannot help but change the space about it – which can pose problems. A new paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics presents a study on how ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, Juice, is interacting with the solar wind. The consequences include potentially problematic surface charging, a dense cloud of photoelectrons that surround the spacecraft and a more than 65-m-long wake of ion-free space behind it, resembling the trail of a boat.
Leidos replaces Lockheed Martin on Artemis rover team
Wednesday, 25 September 2024 22:34
Iridium approved to work on LEO compatibility for upcoming smartphones
Wednesday, 25 September 2024 19:57
Robotic moving 'crew' preps for work on moon
Wednesday, 25 September 2024 19:20 Write a comment
As NASA moves forward with efforts to establish a long-term presence on the moon as part of the Artemis campaign, safely moving cargo from landers to the lunar surface is a crucial capability.
Whether the cargo, also known as payloads, are small scientific experiments or large technology to build infrastructure, there won't be a crew on the moon to do all the work, which is where robots and new software come in.
A team at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, spent the last couple of years infusing existing robotic hardware with a software system that makes the robot operate autonomously. Earlier this month, that team, led by researcher Dr. Julia Cline of NASA Langley's Research Directorate, ran demonstrations of their system called LANDO (Lightweight Surface Manipulation System AutoNomy capabilities Development for surface Operations and construction).
Record-breaking laser demonstration completes mission
Wednesday, 25 September 2024 18:48 Write a comment
NASA's TBIRD (TeraByte InfraRed Delivery) demonstration and its host spacecraft—the PTD-3 (Pathfinder Technology Demonstrator-3)—have completed their technology demonstration. The TBIRD payload spent the past two years breaking world records for the fastest satellite downlink from space using laser communications.
NASA's PTD series leverages a common commercial spacecraft to provide a robust platform for effective testing of technologies with minimal redesign in between launches. After launch in May 2022 on the SpaceX Transporter 5 mission, the PTD-3 spacecraft entered low-Earth orbit, and shortly after, TBIRD began sending laser communications signals to an optical ground station in Table Mountain, California.
TBIRD's two-year demonstration showcased the viability of laser communications. Most NASA missions rely on radio frequency communication systems. However, laser communications use infrared light and can pack significantly more data in a single communications link.
