Copernical Team
Week in images: 22 - 26 March 2021
Write a comment
Week in images: 22 - 26 March 2021
Discover our week through the lens
Apophis impact ruled out for the first time
Write a comment
New observations of asteroid Apophis – thought to pose a slight risk of impacting Earth in 2068 – rule out any chance of impact for at least a century. After 17 years of observations and orbit analysis, ESA is removing the enormous asteroid from its Risk List.
Light show over US sky likely SpaceX debris re-entering atmosphere
Write a comment
A spectacular display of lights that streamed across the night sky over the US Pacific Northwest was probably debris from a SpaceX mission re-entering the atmosphere, the National Weather Service (NWS) said.
"While we await further confirmation on the details, here's the unofficial information we have so far. The widely reported bright objects in the sky were the debris from a Falcon 9 rocket 2nd stage," NWS Seattle tweeted.
Videos posted on social media showed a thick cluster of glowing dots with blazing trails of light moving slowly across the sky before fizzling out, with users speculating the phenomenon might be a meteor shower or even, jokingly, an alien invasion.
Local media reported multiple sightings just after 9 pm local time, with videos posted online from Washington state and Oregon.
NWS Seattle said the sight was more likely to be caused by space debris rather than a meteor or similar object because the latter would be moving far faster, a conclusion backed up by several meteorologists quoted by local media.
Jonathan McDowell from Harvard's Center for Astrophysics also pointed to the Falcon 9 rocket stage as the source of the firework-like display.
ESA–EGU announce Excellence Award winners
Write a comment
ESA, along with the European Geosciences Union (EGU), are excited to announce the winners of the first ESA–EGU Earth Observation Excellence Awards.
Redwire goes public with SPAC Buyout
Write a comment
Redwire, a mission-critical space solutions company, and Genesis Park Acquisition Corp. (NYSE: GNPK) ("Genesis Park"), a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company, announced today that they have entered into a definitive merger agreement that will result in Redwire becoming a publicly traded company. The transaction is expected to be completed by the end of the second quarter of 2021, Earth from Space: Gariep Dam, South Africa
Write a comment
The Gariep Dam, the largest dam in South Africa, is featured in this false-colour image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.
Ocean currents predicted on Enceladus
Write a comment
Buried beneath 20 kilometers of ice, the subsurface ocean of Enceladus--one of Saturn's moons--appears to be churning with currents akin to those on Earth.
The theory, derived from the shape of Enceladus's ice shell, challenges the current thinking that the moon's global ocean is homogenous, apart from some vertical mixing driven by the warmth of the moon's core.
Enceladus, a tiny fr The very first structures in the Universe
Write a comment
The very first moments of the Universe can be reconstructed mathematically even though they cannot be observed directly. Physicists from the Universities of Gottingen and Auckland (New Zealand) have greatly improved the ability of complex computer simulations to describe this early epoch. They discovered that a complex network of structures can form in the first trillionth of a second after the South Korea aims for moon landing vehicle by 2030
Write a comment
South Korea says it ranks seventh in satellites, after the country conducted a successful test of a domestically developed rocket for satellite launch.
President Moon Jae-in said Thursday that his goal is to ensure South Korea has a launch vehicle capable of landing on the moon by 2030 and to help local enterprises become leading aerospace manufacturers like SpaceX, the firm founded by Elo Wright brothers' wing fragment to take flight again on Mars
Write a comment
A piece of cloth from the Wright brothers' first flight in 1903 is set to become part of aviation history again - this time on Mars.
Carillon Historical Park, the Ohio home of the Wright Brio home of the Wright Brothers National Museum, said NASA officials got in contact in 2019 about finding a way to connect Wilbur and Orville Wright's first successful flight in Kitty Hawk, N.C., with the