London, UK (SPX) Dec 22, 2022
A new study involving UCL has uncovered how magnetic waves are transmitted past a standing shock wave, known as the bow shock, that forms ahead of Earth as a result of the solar wind hitting our magnetic bubble (magnetosphere). Shock waves occur in air when a plane travels faster than the speed of sound and also occur in plasma (a fourth state of matter that makes up 99% of the visible Uni

Greenbelt MD (SPX) Dec 27, 2022
On Oct. 9, 2022, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory detected a high-energy blast of light from deep space. The light came from a powerful explosion called a gamma-ray burst dubbed GRB 221009A that ranks among the most luminous known. Scientists around the world trained their telescopes on the aftermath. Michela Negro, a postdoctoral research assistant

Pasadena CA (JPL) Dec 27, 2022
Perseverance has a unique device near its heart that inhales Mars' atmosphere and exhales pure oxygen. This device is named MOXIE, the Mars Oxygen In Situ Resource Utilization Experiment. The toaster-sized MOXIE uses a high-temperature, electrochemical process called solid oxide electrolysis to strip oxygen ions from the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Mars. There are two little gas ex

Pasadena CA (JPL) Dec 27, 2022
On the first sol of Christmas, Curiosity will bring to us; one APXS analysis, one ChemCam analysis and a multitude of Mastcam, MAHLI and RMI images! On the second sol of Christmas, Curiosity will bring to us; more ChemCam RMI images, more Mastcam images, more Navcam images and drive to a new, exciting location. To allow for the MSL science team and engineers to take some time off over the

Berlin, Germany (SPX) Dec 27, 2022
Christmas and winter spirit - also on Mars. Impact craters connected by a striped, coloured ribbon can be seen in the final and very wintry HRSC Mars image of this year. We wish all readers of our martian image series, published together with the European Space Agency (ESA) and Freie Universitat Berlin, happy holidays! Image data from the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA's

Esrange, Sweden (SPX) Dec 27, 2022
On 13 January 2023, the Swedish head of state, King Carl XVI Gustaf, together with European and Swedish political dignitaries will visit Esrange Space Center in northern Sweden to cut the ribbon of a new spaceport that will significantly reshape the European space landscape. After years of preparation and construction, European mainland's first orbital launch complex, Spaceport Esrange, will be

Newquay UK (SPX) Dec 27, 2022
The U.K. Civil Aviation Authority has issued launch and range control licenses to Virgin Orbit (Nasdaq: VORB) to undertake the first satellite launch from UK soil. The granting of these licenses represents a major step forward for the historic Start Me Up mission, and reflects the CAA's concurrence that all reasonable steps have been taken by Virgin Orbit to ensure the desired safety, security,

Warsaw. Poland (SPX) Dec 27, 2022
How would our world be viewed by observers moving faster than light in a vacuum? Such a picture would be clearly different from what we encounter every day. We should expect to see not only phenomena that happen spontaneously, without a deterministic cause, but also particles traveling simultaneously along multiple paths - argue theorists from universities in Warsaw and Oxford. Also the ve

Helsinki, Finland (SPX) Dec 27, 2022
An international team of scientists led by Lucile Turc, an Academy Research Fellow at the University of Helsinki and supported by the International Space Science Institute in Bern has studied the propagation of electromagnetic waves in near-Earth space for three years. The team has studied the waves in the area where the solar wind collides with Earth's magnetic field called foreshock region, an

Princeton NJ (SPX) Dec 27, 2022
Electromagnetic noise poses a major problem for communications, prompting wireless carriers to invest heavily in technologies to overcome it. But for a team of scientists exploring the atomic realm, measuring tiny fluctuations in noise could hold the key to discovery. "Noise is usually thought of as a nuisance, but physicists can learn many things by studying noise," said Nathalie de Leon,