Copernical Team
Apollo 7 astronaut Walter Cunningham dead at 90
Walter Cunningham, the last surviving astronaut from the first successful crewed space mission in NASA's Apollo program, has died.
China is considering where to build a lunar research station
The second moon race is in full swing, with the world's two big superpowers angling to score a new set of firsts on the lunar surface. NASA's Artemis program recently clocked up its first success with the splashdown of Orion, but China is looking to take the lead when it comes to setting up a fully-fledged lunar research station. One of the first steps in that process—figuring out where to put it. That is what a new paper attempts to quantify, and it comes up with a practical solution—the south pole.
There are plenty of advantages to the lunar south pole. It also checks many of the boxes that the Chinese scientists were looking for when they developed their criteria for potential landing sites.
They broke those criteria into two categories—scientific and engineering constraints. Engineering constraints included considerations like the illumination a site receives, its general slope, and the ease with which explorers could access other parts of the moonscape.
Kleos' Observer Mission Targeted for 3 January Launch
Kleos Space S.A. (ASX: KSS, Frankfurt: KS1), a space-powered defence and intelligence technology Company, announces its four Observer Mission (KSF3) satellites are manifested to launch on 3rd January aboard the Transporter-6 SpaceX mission. The launch window opens at approximately 09:56 a.m. EST (14:56 UTC or 15:56 CET).
The Observer Mission satellites will launch into a 525km sun synchron LHAASO's dark matter search places tighter constraints on dark matter's lifetime
Scientists from the Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) have presented roughly 1.5 years of observational data, calculating new limits on the lifetime of heavy dark matter particles that have masses between 10^5 and 10^9 giga-electron volts.
The study, entitled "Constraints on heavy decaying dark matter from 570 days of LHAASO observations," was recently published as a high Mix a space juice to celebrate ESA's Juice mission
ESA is kicking off the new year by inviting you to create a unique juice mocktail to represent the JUpiter ICy moons Explorer - also known as Juice - launching in April. The winner of the most imaginative recipe will be invited to ESA's Social Space launch event in Darmstadt, Germany, where our favourite space juices will be served!
Juice the mission will be exploring gas giant Jupiter and ispace executes second orbital control maneuver
ispace reports that its HAKUTO-R Mission 1 lunar lander has successfully carried out its second orbital control maneuver in accordance with its mission operations plan.
The maneuver was carried out shortly after midnight on Jan. 2, 2023 (Japan Standard Time) and operations were managed from ispace's mission control center located in Nihonbashi, Tokyo. This orbital control maneuver is the s South Korea's lunar orbiter sends photos of Earth, Moon
South Korea's first-ever lunar orbiter Danuri has sent black-and-white photos of the Moon's surface and Earth, the national space centre said Tuesday.
Danuri - a portmanteau of the Korean words for "Moon" and "enjoy" - was launched on a SpaceX rocket from the United States in August 2022 and entered lunar orbit last month.
Its images - taken between December 24 and January 1 - show t Exolaunch to deploy Unseenlabs' latest BRO-series satellite into orbit on Transporter-6 Mission
Unseenlabs, the world leader in space-based RF detection for Maritime Domain Awareness, has recently signed a launch services agreement (LSA) with Exolaunch, an international provider of launch services and deployment solutions, to deploy its BRO-8 nanosatellite on SpaceX's Transporter-6 rideshare mission, which is to launch no earlier than (NET) January 2023.
Manufactured by GOMSpace, BRO Mix a ‘space juice’ to celebrate ESA’s Juice mission!
ESA is kicking off the new year by inviting you to create a unique juice mocktail to represent the JUpiter ICy moons Explorer – also known as Juice – launching in April. The winner of the most imaginative recipe will be invited to ESA’s Social Space launch event in Darmstadt, Germany, where our favourite space juices will be served!
Satellite images show lack of snow in the Italian Alps
The snow line in the Italian Alps last spring was at an average altitude of 400 metres, in some regions even almost a kilometre higher than usual. This was determined by researchers at the German Aerospace Center. They analysed around 15,000 satellite images of the Alps over a period of 37 years. The scientists also investigated the effect of snow cover in the Alps on the water shortage in north 
