Copernical Team
China sets up expert advisory committee for lunar samples
China has set up an expert committee for lunar samples, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) said Tuesday. According to the regulations on lunar sample management, the CNSA established the committee as an expert advisory institution for the management of lunar samples. The committee aims to give full play to the scientific value of lunar samples and standardize their manage
NASA will continue working with Russia on space despite China plan
Russia and NASA will continue to cooperate in space in the near future, even as Russia moves to work with China on lunar exploration, experts said. Russia and China announced March 9 they will cooperate on China's planned International Scientific Lunar Station, while the United States will have no involvement in the Chinese space program under a law passed in 2011. But ultimately
NASA delays Mars helicopter flight again for software update
NASA has postponed the flight of the Mars helicopter Ingenuity, the first controlled flight on another planet, to work through a software problem. The flight had been planned for Thursday and then delayed to Sunday. NASA didn't immediately set a new target date for the flight. "Our best estimate of a targeted flight date is fluid right now, but we are working toward achieving the
Drone test of Hera mission's asteroid radar
Video: How to clear Earth's orbit of space debris
On 20 April 2021, ESA will host the 8th European Conference on Space Debris from Darmstadt, in Germany. Scientists, engineers, industry experts and policy makers will spend the virtual four-day conference discussing the latest issues surrounding space debris. They will exchange the latest research, try to come up with solutions for potential problems and define the future direction of any necessary action.
There are currently over 129 million objects larger than a millimeter in orbits around Earth. These range from inactive satellites to flakes of paint. But no matter how small the item of debris, anything traveling up to 56,000 km/h in an orbit is dangerous if it comes into contact with the many satellites that connect us around the world, be it for GPS, mobile phone data or internet connectivity. The solution is to take action before it's too late. This is why ESA has commissioned ClearSpace-1—the world's first mission to remove space debris—for launch in 2025.
This film contains interviews with ESA Head of Space Debris Office Tim Flohrer; ESA Head of Clean Space Office Luisa Innocenti; and Xanthi Oikonomidou, ESA Space Debris Office.
Researchers study collective behavior of nanosatellites
Scientists from the Skoltech Space Center (SSC) have developed nanosatellite interaction algorithms for scientific measurements using a tetrahedral orbital formation of CubeSats that exchange data and apply interpolation algorithms to create local maps of physical measurements in real time. The study presents an example of geomagnetic field measurement, which shows that these data can be used by other satellites for attitude control and, therefore, provided on a data-as-a-service basis. The research was published in the journal Advances in Space Research.
SSC is the research lead within the Nanosatellites Swarm project ("Roy MKA") performed by a consortium of several Russian universities and included in the ISS experimental program led by RSC Energia. "Roy MKA" aims to deploy autonomous groups of CubeSats and verify their swarm behavior.
For one of the "Roy MKA" experiments, SSC researchers suggested a tetrahedral formation, which provides an ability to measure the geomagnetic field at any point on orbit. The system is fully autonomous, which means that satellites can process and update measurement data on board and predict magnetic field values by interpolation.
"We use the Kriging interpolation which helps to select the magnetic field values in accordance with its characteristics (autocorrelation).
Roscosmos has lost several contracts for satellite launches due to 'mean' US sanctions
The Russian State Space Corporation Roscosmos has lost several potential contracts for launching foreign satellites due to Washington's sanctions, Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin told Sputnik on Monday. "I am aware of several similar situations when the customers would like to use our rockets but were forced to refuse because of the mean US sanctions. This happens if the spacecra
First results from Fermilab's Muon g-2 experiment strengthen evidence of new physics
The long-awaited first results from the Muon g-2 experiment at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory show fundamental particles called muons behaving in a way that is not predicted by scientists' best theory, the Standard Model of particle physics. This landmark result, made with unprecedented precision, confirms a discrepancy that has been gnawing at researchers
Space Debris
On 20 April 2021, ESA will host the 8th European Conference on Space Debris from Darmstadt, in Germany. Scientists, engineers, industry experts and policy makers will spend the virtual four day conference discussing the latest issues surrounding space debris. They will exchange the latest research, try to come up with solutions for potential problems and define the future direction of any necessary action.
There are currently over 129 million objects larger than a millimetre in orbits around Earth. These range from inactive satellites to flakes of paint. But no matter how small the item of debris, anything travelling up
Chinese rocket for space station mission arrives at launch site
China's Long March-7 Y3 rocket, which will launch the cargo craft of China's space station, has arrived at its launch site in southern China's Hainan Province. The rocket, alongside the Tianzhou-2 cargo craft that has already been transported to the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site, will be assembled and tested at the launch site, the China Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSEO) said on Mo