Copernical Team
NASA delivers first flight hardware to ESA for Lunar Pathfinder
NASA delivered the first flight hardware for the Lunar Pathfinder mission to ESA (European Space Agency), which formally accepted the instrument on Nov. 4. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, developed the instrument, a laser retroreflector array, which will test new navigation techniques for lunar missions.
NASA and ESA plan to launch Lunar Pathfinder via a future Commercial Lunar Payload Services delivery. In addition to testing navigation capabilities, Lunar Pathfinder will operate as a commercial communications relay satellite and provide communications services for exploration missions on the lunar surface.
The Lunar Pathfinder mission is led by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL), and ESA arranged for the mission to provide communications services to NASA. Teams from NASA, ESA, and SSTL completed inspections when the laser retroreflector array arrived at SSTL's facility in Guildford, U.K., where it will be installed in the satellite.
NASA capsule flies over Apollo landing sites, heads home
NASA's Orion capsule and its test dummies swooped one last time around the moon Monday, flying over a couple Apollo landing sites before heading home.
NASA is testing a new robotic arm that really knows how to chill out
Future planetary missions could explore in extremely cold temperatures that stymie existing spacecraft, thanks to a project under development at JPL.
When NASA returns to the moon with Artemis, the agency and its partners will reach unexplored regions of the lunar surface around the South Pole, where it can get much colder at night than even on frigid Mars.
Artemis lunar flyby: Orion is coming home
Today at 17:43 CET (16:43 GMT) the European Service Module for Orion fired its main engine at less than 127 km from the Moon's surface to put the Artemis spacecraft on a collision course with Earth.
Replay: MTG-I1 pre-launch briefing
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Watch the replay of the Meteosat Third Generation Imager-1 pre-launch press briefing held on 5 December 2022. Speakers include Simonetta Cheli, ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programmes; Phil Evans, Director General of Eumetsat; Bertrand Denis, Vice President Observation and Science at Thales Alenia Space and Simon Keogh, Head of Space Applications and Nowcasting Research & Development at the UK Met Office.
MTG-I1 is scheduled to be launched on 13 December on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. It is the first of six satellites that form the full MTG system, which will provide critical
Dabeeo partners with Maxar to expand the global satellite data analysis market
Dabeeo, a geospatial information technology company based on AI (CEO: Ju-hum Park), has announced a partnership with Maxar Technology ("Maxar" hereinafter), a leading space technology and intelligence company. This partnership enables Dabeeo to expand its domestic and international earth observation service business.
The satellite data analysis market is expanding rapidly in line with the Sidus Space receives NOAA Tier 1 License
Sidus Space, Inc. (NASDAQ:SIDU), a Space-as-a-Service company focused on mission critical hardware manufacturing combined with commercial satellite design, manufacture, launch, and data collection, has secured U.S. regulatory approval to provide global data services from its upcoming LizzieSat-1 mission through a Tier 1 license granted by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration Researchers observe directly turbulent magnetic reconnection in solar wind
Researchers from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, under the direction of Prof. WANG Rongsheng and Prof. LU Quanming, used data from the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission to directly observe bursty and turbulent magnetic reconnection in the solar wind. Their findings were published in Nature Astronomy.
Magnetic reconnection i Flying an interstellar telescope
Today, he is among the millions of space enthusiasts enjoying the exquisite photography from that instrument that NASA is publishing to give academics as well as armchair astronomers a look back billions of years into the history of the universe.
"It's a little bit of wonder, a little bit of amazement and in some ways, a deep sense of humility having a small role in it," said Peralta, a Ra The 2022 Geminids meteor shower is approaching
The cosmos' annual gift to sky watchers, the Geminids Meteor shower, will peak on Dec. 13-14 this year.
During peak activity and perfect weather conditions, which are rare, the Geminids produce approximately 100-150 meteors per hour for viewing. However, this year a wanning gibbous moon will make it harder to view most of the shower, resulting in only 30-40 visible meteors per hour at the 
