Urbana IL (SPX) Feb 24, 2023
Although the Pony Express lasted only a short time in the mid-1800s before being outperformed by the transcontinental telegraph, it inspired a concept for a string of small satellites to transport data from Mars to Earth and help alleviate the data logjam currently occurring in the Deep Space Network. "The Solar System Pony Express is a mission concept that aims to augment the data transmi

Luxembourg (SPX) Feb 24, 2023
The Government of Luxembourg has announced that it will use SES's O3b mPOWER system as a crucial resilient satcom infrastructure for Luxembourg, its partners, and NATO in the areas of defense and security, disaster recovery, and more. The program, MEO Global Services (MGS), valued at 195 million euro over 10 years, will authorize the acquisition and operation of O3b mPOWER services, subject to a

Image: Cosmic contortions

Image: The Triple Frontier, a region where Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina meet, is featured in this false-colour image, captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.

Berkeley CA (SPX) Feb 24, 2023
Before DESI, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, can begin its 5-year mission from an Arizona mountaintop to produce the largest 3D sky map yet, researchers first needed an even bigger 2D map of the universe. The 2D map, pieced together from 200,000 telescope images and several years of satellite data, lacks information about galaxy distances, and DESI will supply this and provide ot

Kitt Peak AZ (SPX) Feb 24, 2023
The largest two-dimensional map of the sky ever made has grown even larger with the tenth data release from the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys - a monumental six-year survey covering nearly half the sky. This new data release adds increased sky and wavelength coverage to the already completed surveys made with data from NSF's NOIRLab telescopes at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona and Cerro

Norman OK (SPX) Feb 24, 2023
As the world transitions toward more renewable energy resources and deals with the consequences of a changing climate, the resiliency of energy infrastructure is becoming ever more urgent. University of Oklahoma researcher Paul Moses, Ph.D., has received a Faculty Early CAREER Development award from the National Science Foundation to better understand how chaotic grid disturbances from events li

Bonn, Germany (SPX) Feb 24, 2023
An international research group led by Stefanie Komossa from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, presents important new results on the galaxy OJ 287, based on the most dense and longest radio-to-high-energy observations to date. The scientists were able to test crucial binary model predictions using multiple observing tools including the Effelsberg radio telescope and

Greenbelt MD (SPX) Feb 24, 2023
Earth and Venus are rocky planets of about the same size and rock chemistry, so they should be losing their internal heat to space at about the same rate. How Earth loses its heat is well known, but Venus' heat flow mechanism has been a mystery. A study that uses three-decade-old data from NASA's Magellan mission has taken a new look at how Venus cools and found that thin regions of the planet's

Pasadena CA (JPL) Feb 21, 2023
After a holiday/soliday weekend, we're back to work with today's single sol plan, and there's a lot to pack into it. After the drive, Curiosity's wheel scuffed the rippled sand feature right in front of us, which you can see in the image above. This scuff - nicknamed 'Taracua' - is the subject of both ChemCam and Mastcam observations looking at both the surface and interior of the feature.