Washington DC (SPX) Dec 02, 2021
NASA has signed agreements with three U.S. companies to develop designs of space stations and other commercial destinations in space. The agreements are part of the agency's efforts to enable a robust, American-led commercial economy in low-Earth orbit. The total estimated award amount for all three funded Space Act Agreements is $415.6 million. The companies that received awards are:

Denver CO (SPX) Dec 02, 2021
Nanoracks, in collaboration with Voyager Space and Lockheed Martin, has been awarded a $160 million contract by NASA to design its Starlab commercial space station as part of the agency's Commercial Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) Development program. Starlab will enable NASA's initiative to stimulate the commercial space economy and provide science and crew capabilities prior to the retirement of the Int

Pasadena CA (JPL) Dec 02, 2021
The engineers at JPL responsible for driving Curiosity yet again delivered a perfect drive to some boulders that the science team have been interested in investigating. The large boulders are thought to represent the darker, resistant rocks exposed just above us that cap the underlying less resistant, lighter coloured rocks we have been driving over. The caprocks and boulders both show t

Montreal, Canada (SPX) Dec 02, 2021
The search of life beyond our world is an exciting venture that may yield an enormous discovery in the not-too-distant future. However, space agencies around the world, including NASA and the European Space Agency, have long been aware of the potential risks of biological contamination and have set in place planetary protection policies. In the face of increasing space missions, including those

Berlin, Germany (SPX) Dec 02, 2021
As far as extrasolar planets go, 'GJ 367 b' is a featherweight. With half the mass of Earth, the newly discovered planet is one of the lightest among the nearly 5000 exoplanets known today. It takes the extrasolar planet approximately eight hours to orbit its parent star. With a diameter of just over 9000 kilometres, GJ 367 b is slightly larger than Mars. The planetary system is located ju

SpaceX deployed 48 more satellites for its Starlink broadband constellation Dec. 2, along with two remote sensing spacecraft for BlackSky in a mission that breaks the record for Falcon 9 launches in a calendar year.

Image: Tiny crystal of power

The earliest launch date for Europe’s latest Galileo satellites is now during the night of 3-4 December. 

Moscow (Sputnik) Dec 02, 2021
In recent weeks, the US media outlets have been ramping up fears about adversaries especially China - allegedly planning different ways to target the United States and beefing up its weaponry in order to do so. Under this pretext, calls have emerged for Washington to "catch up?? US Space Force General David Thompson said that American satellites are being attacked "every single day" by adv

Burlington VT (SPX) Dec 01, 2021
To persist, life must reproduce. Over billions of years, organisms have evolved many ways of replicating, from budding plants to sexual animals to invading viruses. Now scientists have discovered an entirely new form of biological reproduction - and applied their discovery to create the first-ever, self-replicating living robots. The same team that built the first living robots has discove