Copernical Team
Lockheed Martin's first LM 400 Multi-Mission Spacecraft completed
The first Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) LM 400, a flexible, mid-sized satellite customizable for military, civil or commercial users, rolled off the company's digital factory production line and is advancing toward its planned 2023 launch.
The agile LM 400 spacecraft bus design enables one platform to support multiple missions, including remote sensing, communications, imaging, radar and per Making the Most of Limited Data: Sols 3278-3279
The Sol 3727 drive went well, positioning the rover at the transition in the Marker Band that was the goal of the drive. As expected, we did not receive enough image data to allow DRT brushing to be planned, but we were able to plan APXS and MAHLI observations of a rough bedrock target named "Primavera."
The lack of complete, full-resolution Navcam coverage made it more challenging than us The faults and valleys of a Martian volcanic highland plateau
January's 'Mars Image of the Month' reveals a geologically complex region on the flanks of Thaumasia Planum, an extensive volcanic plateau in the highlands southeast of the Valles Marineris valley system. The image data was acquired using the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA's Mars Express mission. HRSC is a camera experiment developed and operated by the German Aerospace Center Is there life on Mars? Maybe, and it could have dropped its teddy
Yogi, Paddington and Winnie the Pooh, move over. There's a new bear in town. Or on Mars, anyway.
The beaming face of a cute-looking teddy bear appears to have been carved into the surface of our nearest planetary neighbor, waiting for a passing satellite to discover it.
And when the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter passed over last month, carrying aboard the most powerful camera ever to ventu NASA announces finalists in challenge to design future astronaut food
Huntsville AL (SPX) Feb 01, 2023
NASA has selected 11 finalists in Phase 2 of the Deep Space Food Challenge, a public competition to extend the limits of humans in space - through food.
A first-of-its-kind coordinated effort between NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), the Deep Space Food Challenge aims to kickstart future food systems for pioneering missions to the Moon, Mars, and b NASA Spinoffs bolster climate resilience, improve medical care, more
When it comes to NASA, most people look to the skies as rockets, rovers, and astronauts push the boundaries of space exploration. But the benefits of going above and beyond can be found here on Earth through products and services born from NASA innovation.
The latest edition of NASA's Spinoff publication features dozens of new commercialized technologies that use the agency's technology, r Scientists release newly accurate map of all the matter in the universe
Sometimes to know what the matter is, you have to find it first. When the universe began, matter was flung outward and gradually formed the planets, stars and galaxies that we know and love today. By carefully assembling a map of that matter today, scientists can try to understand the forces that shaped the evolution of the universe.
A group of scientists, including several with the Univer Two nearby exoplanets might be habitable
The discovery: Two planets about as massive as Earth orbit a red-dwarf star only 16 light-years away - nearby in astronomical terms. The planets, GJ 1002 b and c, lie within the star's habitable zone, the orbital distance that could allow liquid water to form on a planet's surface if it has the right kind of atmosphere.
Key facts: Whether red-dwarf stars are likely to host habitable worlds New research computes first step toward predicting lifespan of electric space propulsion systems
Electric space propulsion systems use energized atoms to generate thrust. The high-speed beams of ions bump against the graphite surfaces of the thruster, eroding them a little more with each hit, and are the systems' primary lifetime-limiting factor. When ion thrusters are ground tested in an enclosed chamber, the ricocheting particles of carbon from the graphite chamber walls can also redeposit back onto the thruster surfaces. This changes the measured performance characteristics of the thruster.
Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign used data from low-pressure chamber experiments and large-scale computations to develop a model to better understand the effects of ion erosion on carbon surfaces —the first step in predicting its failure.
"We need an accurate assessment of the ion erosion rate on graphite to predict thruster life, but testing facilities have reported varying sputtering rates, leading to large uncertainties in predictions," said Huy Tran, a Ph.D.
Researchers complete first real-world study of Martian helicopter dust dynamics
Mars is a dusty planet. From tiny dust devils to vast storms that shroud the planet, dust is a constant challenge for research missions. That was especially true for Ingenuity, the rotorcraft that since February 2021 has been exploring Mars alongside NASA's Perseverance rover. Now, researchers at Stevens Institute of Technology, the Space Science Institute, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have completed the first real-world study of Martian dust dynamics based on Ingenuity's historic first flights on the Red Planet, paving the way for future extraterrestrial rotorcraft missions.
The work, reported in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, could support NASA's Mars Sample Return Program, which will retrieve samples collected by Perseverance, or the Dragonfly mission that will set course for Titan, Saturn's largest moon, in 2027.
