Copernical Team
NASA's On-orbit Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing 1 (OSAM-1) mission ready for spacecraft build
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NASA is one step closer to robotically refueling a satellite and demonstrating in-space assembly and manufacturing thanks to the completion of an important milestone.
In April 2021, NASA and Maxar Technologies successfully completed the On-orbit Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing 1 (OSAM-1) mission spacecraft accommodation Critical Design Review (CDR). This milestone demonstrates that the maturity of the design for the OSAM-1 spacecraft bus is appropriate to support proceeding with fabrication, assembly, integration, and testing.
OSAM-1 will, for the first time ever, robotically refuel a U.S. government satellite not designed to be serviced. The spacecraft will consist of a servicing payload, provided by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with two robotic arms that will be attached to the spacecraft bus. The bus will also incorporate a payload called Space Infrastructure Dexterous Robot (SPIDER) that will demonstrate in-space assembly and manufacturing. SPIDER will use a third robotic arm to assemble a communications antenna and an element called MakerSat built by Tethers Unlimited to manufacture a beam. The spacecraft bus and SPIDER are being built by Maxar Technologies.
Image: NASA's Lucy high gain antenna up close
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Lucy's epic journey to observe Jupiter's Trojan asteroids requires a reliable communications link back to Earth, and so the spacecraft is outfitted with a 6.5-ft. (2-meter)-wide high gain antenna for this task.
Designed and built by Lockheed Martin, this same style antenna has been used to return science data from Mars and transfer back photos of asteroid Bennu. Lucy's antenna will send back the first-ever close up images and spectra of Trojan asteroids.
The signal from the antenna will also help determine the mass of these never-before-visited space objects revealed by tiny changes in frequency caused by the Doppler effect.
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Space weather is difficult to predict—with only an hour to prevent disasters on Earth
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Recent developments at the forefront of astronomy allow us to observe that planets orbiting other stars have weather. Indeed, we have known that other planets in our own solar system have weather, in many cases more extreme than our own.
Our lives are affected by short-term atmospheric variations of weather on Earth, and we fear that longer-term climate change will also have a large impact. The recently coined term "space weather" refers to effects that arise in space but affect Earth and regions around it. More subtle than meteorological weather, space weather usually acts on technological systems, and has potential impacts that range from communication disruption to power grid failures.
The natural brightness of the night sky
Boeing's troubled Starliner capsule now aiming for July launch
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NASA and Boeing are now targeting July 30 for an uncrewed test flight of the aerospace company's troubled Starliner capsule to the International Space Station, they announced Thursday.
The launch has been postponed multiple times, with the last announced date of April scuppered due to a cold snap that caused extensive power outages in Texas in March.
The NASA Commercial Crew program is run partly from the Johnson Space Center in Houston, though it launches from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
Lift-off is now scheduled for 2:53 pm Eastern Time (1853 GMT) on July 30.
"NASA and Boeing have done an incredible amount of work to get to this point," said Steve Stich, Commercial Crew program manager.
US watching Chinese rocket's erratic re-entry: Pentagon
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The Pentagon said Wednesday it is following the trajectory of a Chinese rocket expected to make an uncontrolled entry into the atmosphere this weekend, with the risk of crashing down in an inhabited area.
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is "aware and he knows the space command is tracking, literally tracking this rocket debris," Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said.
China on Thursday launched the first of three elements for its space station, the CSS, which was powered by the Long March 5B rocket that is now being tracked.
The body of the rocket "is almost intact coming down," Kirby said, adding that its re-entry is expected sometime around Saturday.
Juice arrives at ESA’s technical heart
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The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, Juice, has come ‘home’ to ESA’s technical centre in the Netherlands to undergo an extreme environment test in Europe’s largest thermal vacuum chamber to prepare for its journey to the outer Solar System.
Starry night at the Ariane 6 launch base
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A timelapse under the stars on the Ariane 6 launch base at Europe’s Spaceport Masked campaign
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Researchers take a group photo in front of the Air Zero G aircraft to mark the end of the 75th ESA parabolic flight campaign. The campaign was the third to take place under Covid-19 restrictions, and ran from 21 to 30 April in Bordeaux, France.
Participants and coordinators adjusted to a new way of flying: PCR tests were required to enter France, as well as rapid antigen or RT LAMP tests each day for every participant. Facilities on the ground as well as on board were adapted to allow for social distancing and cleanliness requirements. Surgical masks were worn
UBCO researcher uses geology to help astronomers find habitable planets
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Astronomers have identified more than 4,000, and counting, confirmed exoplanets - planets orbiting stars other than the sun - but only a fraction have the potential to sustain life.
Now, new research from UBC's Okanagan campus is using the geology of early planet formation to help identify those that may be capable of supporting life.
"The discovery of any planet is pretty exciting,