Copernical Team
SpaceX rocket deploys record-setting cargo
SpaceX on Sunday launched its Falcon 9 rocket carrying a record number of satellites on board, the private space company said. The rocket successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida at 10:00 am (1500 GMT), 24 hours after its initial take-off had been scrubbed due to bad weather. Andy Tran, a SpaceX production supervisor, said in a video of the launch that the Falcon 9 was carrying
U of Louisiana-Lafayette mini-satellite zipping around Earth
A cubical satellite small enough to sit on the palm of your hand is zipping around the world and sending data about radiation to the Louisiana students who designed and built it.
The satellite, called CAPE-3, carries a chip designed and built by students at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette to detect radiation, with an eye to keeping astronauts safe.
"The detectors would provide liquid crystal display readings so astronauts could constantly monitor how much radiation they're being exposed to," Dr. Paul Darby, the university's project leader, said in a news release.
The satellite also carries a tiny Geiger counter so students can tell whether the chip is accurate.
Each side of the satellite is only 10 centimeters—less than 4 inches—across. It was among 10 launched Jan. 17 from a Virgin Orbit rocket that itself was launched high above the Pacific Ocean from a customized Boeing 747.
Eight of the other nine were built by students at other schools. The tenth was built by NASA, which runs the CubeSat Launch Initiative to give nonprofit organizations and schools at all levels a chance to do scientific investigations in space and help NASA with exploration and technology development.
Week in images: 18 - 22 January 2021
Week in images: 18 - 22 January 2021
Discover our week through the lens
SpaceX to send TU Dresden satellite into space
TU Dresden's SOMP2b satellite will be lifted into orbit by SpaceX on January 22, 2021. It will be used to investigate new nanomaterials under the extreme conditions of space, to test systems for converting the sun's heat into electricity and to precisely measure the residual atmosphere around the satellite. SOMP2b will begin its journey around the Earth at an altitude of 500 km—slightly higher than the ISS space station. It will orbit the Earth in a special polar, sun-synchronous orbit, always flying over the TU Dresden ground station at approximately the same time of day and sending measurement data.
SOMP2b is a follow-up satellite to SOMP2, a nanosatellite jointly developed by students, Ph.D. candidates and scientists from TU Dresden's Faculty of Mechanical Science and Engineering. SOMP2b stands for Student On-Orbit Measurement Project 2b. It is 20 cm x 10 cm x 10 cm in size and weighs a little less than 2 kilograms.
Magnetic waves explain mystery of Sun's outer layer
The Sun's extremely hot outer layer, the corona, has a very different chemical composition from the cooler inner layers, but the reason for this has puzzled scientists for decades.
One explanation is that, in the middle layer (the chromosphere), magnetic waves exert a force that separates the Sun's plasma into different components, so that only the ion particles are transported into the corona, while leaving neutral particles behind (thus leading to a build-up of elements such as iron, silicon and magnesium in the outer atmosphere).
Now, in a new study published in The Astrophysical Journal, researchers combined observations from a telescope in New Mexico, the United States, with satellites located near Earth to identify a link between magnetic waves in the chromosphere and areas of abundant ionized particles in the hot outer atmosphere.
Lead author Dr. Deborah Baker (UCL Space & Climate Physics) said: "The different chemical compositions of the Sun's inner and outer layers were first noted more than 50 years ago. This discovery generated what is one of the long-standing open questions in astrophysics.
Earth from Space: Sardinia
This week's edition of the Earth from Space programme features a Copernicus Sentinel-2 image of Sardinia, the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.
See also Sardinia, Italy to download the image.
Sardinia, Italy
Iodine thruster could slow space junk accumulation
For the first time ever, a telecommunications satellite has used an iodine propellant to change its orbit around Earth.
The small but potentially disruptive innovation could help to clear the skies of space junk, by enabling tiny satellites to self-destruct cheaply and easily at the end of their missions, by steering themselves into the atmosphere where they would burn up.
Counting elephants from space
For the first time, scientists have successfully used satellite cameras coupled with deep learning to count animals in complex geographical landscapes, taking conservationists an important step forward in monitoring populations of endangered species. For this research, the satellite Worldview 3 used high-resolution imagery to capture African elephants moving through forests and grasslands.
China's space tracking ship completes satellite launch monitoring
China's space tracking ship Yuanwang-5 completed its mission in the Pacific Ocean to monitor and ensure the launch of the Tiantong 1-03 satellite on Wednesday. China successfully launched the mobile telecommunication satellite at 12:25 a.m. (Beijing Time) on Wednesday. The satellite entered its planned orbit. As the only maritime monitoring site for the launch, Yuanwang-5 was respons