Washington DC (UPI) Sep 12, 2021
Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket suffered a booster failure after lifting off Monday morning, causing an emergency abort system to separate the capsule from the booster. The unmanned mission was carrying 36 payloads from academia, research institutions, and students across the globe and was expected to reach the edge of space and return in a series of suborbital flights. It was t

Washington (AFP) Sept 12, 2022
An uncrewed Blue Origin rocket carrying research payloads crashed shortly after liftoff on Monday, but the capsule carrying experiments escaped and floated safely back to Earth, Jeff Bezos' space company said. The company tweeted a short video clip showing the moment when the capsule fired emergency thrusters to separate from its booster rocket, around a minute after launching from Blue Orig

NASA will host a briefing at 11:30 a.m. EDT (8:30 a.m. PDT) on Thursday, Sept. 15, at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California to provide highlights from the first year and a half of the Perseverance rover’s exploration of Mars.

Bern, Switzerland (SPX) Sep 12, 2022
After a thousand days in orbit, the CHEOPS space telescope shows almost no signs of wear. Under these conditions, it could continue to reveal details of some of the most fascinating exoplanets for quite some time. CHEOPS is a joint mission by the European Space Agency (ESA) and Switzerland, under the aegis of the University of Bern in collaboration with the University of Geneva. Since its

Paris, France (SPX) Sep 12, 2022
Kythera Space Solutions (Kythera), the leading provider of dynamic management systems for next-generation payloads and SATCOM networks, has entered into a 10-year partnership with Thales Alenia Space, a Joint Venture between Thales (67 %) and Leonardo (33 %), to develop the Ground Mission Segment System (GMSS) for Thales Alenia Space's software-defined satellite (SDS) product line, Space Inspire

Newington CT (SPX) Sep 12, 2022
PCX Aerosystems ("PCX"), a market-leading producer of advanced mechanical systems for the aerospace industry, announced the September 2, 2022 acquisition of NuSpace, Inc. ("NuSpace") from Cornerstone Capital Holdings and members of the NuSpace leadership team. With engineering and manufacturing roots going back to 1907, NuSpace has evolved from a diversified mechanical systems manufacturer into

Video: 00:00:58

ESA’s Solar Orbiter has solved the mystery of a magnetic phenomenon in the solar wind. It has taken the first ever image of a ‘switchback’ in the solar corona, confirming its predicted ‘S’ shape. A switchback is defined by rapid flips in magnetic field direction. The observed switchback is linked to an active region associated with sunspots and magnetic activity where there is an interaction between open and closed magnetic field lines. The interaction releases energy and sends the S-shaped disturbance into space. The new data suggest that switchbacks could originate near the solar surface, and may

Image:

ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst and NASA astronaut Stephanie Wilson are getting world-class geology training this week during the fifth edition of ESA’s Pangaea course.

A balanced mix of theory and field trips, the course will take the pair all over Europe to hone their geology skills. The training began last week in the Italian Dolomites with lessons on fundamental geology knowledge and skills, martian geology and asteroids at Bletterbach Canyon.

The rock samples from the canyon Alexander is holding in this image are a combination of gypsum (white hue) in siltstone-sandstone (reddish hue), and are analogous to rocks found on Mars.

Video: 00:03:57

It has been an exciting and busy summer for the European Space Agency, with development and testing of its new Ariane 6 launcher. At Europe’s spaceport in, French Guiana, a test model of the launcher’s central core was assembled for the first time. Ariane 6 is the first Ariane rocket to be assembled horizontally, which is simpler and less costly than more traditional vertical assembly. Then, the rocket was moved to its launchpad and placed upright in the massive mobile gantry for combined tests, to validate the compatibility between all components of the complete launch system. Soon