Copernical Team
Virgin Galactic completes first human spaceflight from Spaceport America, New Mexico
Virgin Galactic has completed its third spaceflight and the first ever spaceflight from Spaceport America, New Mexico. The flight, which took place May 22nd, sees New Mexico become the third US state to launch humans into space. VSS Unity achieved a speed of Mach 3 after being released from the mothership, VMS Eve, and reached space, at an altitude of 55.45 miles before gliding smoothly to
Experiments validate the possibility of helium rain inside Jupiter and Saturn
Nearly 40 years ago, scientists first predicted the existence of helium rain inside planets composed primarily of hydrogen and helium, such as Jupiter and Saturn. However, achieving the experimental conditions necessary to validate this hypothesis hasn't been possible - until now. In a paper published by Nature, scientists reveal experimental evidence to support this long-standing predicti
Measuring Moon dust to fight air pollution
Moon dust isn't like the stuff that collects on a bookshelf or on tables - it's ubiquitous and abrasive, and it clings to everything. It's so bad that it even broke the vacuum NASA designed to clean the Moon dust off Apollo spacesuits. With NASA's return to the Moon and its orbit, it will need to manage the dust, which is dangerous for people too. The first step is knowing how much is arou
Newly discovered glaciers could aid human survival on Mars
With Elon Musk keen to settle on Mars, and NASA planning its own human missions, there's more to it than finding a safe place to land on the red planet. When it's no longer just robots, rovers and drones arriving, accessing the untapped abundance of ice that lies beneath the Martian surface will be key for astronauts too. Expertly checking both boxes, planetary geologists at Western have n
Roscosmos Chief invites NASA Counterpart to Russia to discuss space cooperation
Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russian state space agency Roscosmos, announced on Tuesday that he invited the newly appointed head of NASA, Bill Nelson, to visit Russia to discuss cooperation in space. "The new head of NASA, Mr. Nelson, is a respected and honored person and specialist. I will be glad to meet him. We have already invited him to Russia and are ready to discuss openly and constr
Looming US intelligence report to address UFOs
Are aliens watching us? That's what Americans hope to find out when a report on the US government's secret files on UFOs goes to Congress next month after years of sightings and videos suggesting that highly advanced extraterrestrials are, indeed, out there. But the report from the Director of National Intelligence, pulled together with classified military files, could fall short of exp
Jupiter antenna that came in from the cold
GM's newest vehicle: Off-road, self-driving rover for moon
Reconstructing 3D magnetic topology of on-disk solar prominence bubbles
Solar prominences or filaments are cool and dense plasma structures suspended in the hot and tenuous corona.
Recent high-resolution solar limb observations reveal that some dark "bubbles" with bright arch-like boundaries form below prominences. It is puzzling that how these bubbles, semi-circular voids, form below dense prominences.
Ph.D. student Guo Yilin from National Astronomical Observatories of Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC), together with Dr. Hou Yijun, Dr. Li Ting, and Prof. Zhang Jun, found and investigated an on-disk bubble based on stereoscopic observations for the first time.
The study was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
It is widely accepted that bubbles are closely related to the overlying prominence system and could eventually lead to the generation of a coronal mass ejection. This has serious effect on space weather.
"However, previous studies are all based on the solar limb observations or numerical simulations. If the bubble could be found on the solar disk, we could unveil the magnetic nature of the bubble," said Dr.
Buildup to super blood moon eclipses the finale
In the end, the buildup seemed to eclipse the finale.