Beijing (XNA) May 03, 2022
The Mars rover Zhurong has traveled more than 1.9 km since it first set its wheels on the surface of the planet in May last year, according to the latest data released by the Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center of the China National Space Administration. As of Sunday, Zhurong had been operating on the surface of Mars for 342 Martian days at a distance of 240 million km from Earth. A

Boston MA (SPX) May 03, 2022
Scattered across our Milky Way galaxy are tens of millions of black holes - immensely strong gravitational wells of spacetime, from which infalling matter, and even light, can never escape. Black holes are dark by definition, except on the rare occasions when they feed. As a black hole pulls in gas and dust from an orbiting star, it can give off spectacular bursts of X-ray light that bounce and

Adelaide, Australia (SPX) May 03, 2022
SmartSAT CRC today announced $1 million to assist QuantX Labs in the development of its optical atomic clock satellite payload that will deliver the heart of a future Australian sovereign navigation and timing capability. This partnership will accelerate the space-qualification and commercialisation of a new type of atomic clock. QuantX's clock delivers a quantum leap in timing performance

Morgantown WV (SPX) May 03, 2022
A cross-disciplinary team of researchers from West Virginia University are undertaking a pioneering project in space weather research to improve modeling and forecasting of space weather to safeguard satellites in orbit and infrastructure on Earth. Space weather is a relatively unexplored phenomenon that is caused by large bursts of particles released by the sun. The unusually strong burst

Canberra, Australia (The Conversaton) May 03, 2022
When a star explodes and dies in a supernova, it takes on a new life of sorts. Pulsars are the extremely rapidly rotating objects left over after massive stars have exhausted their fuel supply. They are extremely dense, with a mass similar to the Sun crammed into a region the size of Sydney. Pulsars emit beams of radio waves from their poles. As those beams sweep across Earth, we can

Atlanta GA (SPX) May 03, 2022
Cosmic Shielding Corporation (Cosmic Shielding), the leading space radiation management company and creator of Plasteel technology, today announced an agreement with European in-space manufacturing tech start-up Space Forge to test Cosmic Shielding's radiation shielding technology aboard Space Forge's new small class vehicle. The ForgeStar-0 will be launching on Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne this S

Midland TX (SPX) May 03, 2022
AST SpaceMobile, Inc. (NASDAQ: ASTS), the company building the first and only space-based cellular broadband network designed to be accessible directly by standard mobile phones, today announced it has received an experimental license from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) supporting its U.S.-based testing of the BlueWalker 3 satellite. The license covers BlueWalker 3 space-to-ground

Rocket Lab declared success in its effort to catch an Electron booster in midair after launch May 2, even though the helicopter had to release the booster moments later.

The post Rocket Lab launches smallsats, catches but drops booster appeared first on SpaceNews.

SpaceWERX selected 125 industry teams for the initial phase of the Orbital Prime program, an effort to develop technologies for orbital debris removal and other space services.

The post Space Force selects 125 industry proposals for on-orbit servicing technologies appeared first on SpaceNews.

Evidence is mounting of a need to perform an environmental review before approving SpaceX’s plans to add nearly 30,000 satellites to its Starlink constellation, satellite broadband competitor Viasat told the FCC May 2.