Copernical Team
Roscosmos, NASA in contradiction over next ISS Commander
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NASA and Roscosmos diverged on information concerning the next commander of the International Space Station.
NASA's press office told Sputnik that after Soyuz MS-17 dispatches from the ISS on 17 April with Ryzhikov, Kud-Sverchkov and Rubins on board, Walker will become the 65th expedition commander. When she leaves the station on the board of the Crew Dragon spaceship in late April, Japan' Four Long March 11 launches by sea planned
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China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp plans to carry out four sea-based launches this year by its Long March 11 solid-propellant carrier rocket, said a senior scientist at the State-owned space contractor.
Bao Weimin, the company's director of science and technology and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said five flights have been scheduled this year for the Long Mar China's Long March 7A rocket puts satellite in orbit
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The newest type in China's carrier rocket family - Long March 7A - made its first successful flight at the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan province early Friday morning, sending a technology demonstration satellite into space.
The 60.1-meter colossal rocket blasted off from a launch pad in the coastal launch center at 1:51 am, and soon deployed the New Technology Demonstrator 9 expe Asteroid 2001 FO32 will safely pass by Earth March 21
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The largest asteroid predicted to pass by our planet in 2021 will be at its closest on March 21, providing astronomers a rare opportunity to get a good look at a rocky relic that formed at the dawn of our solar system.
Called 2001 FO32, the near-Earth asteroid will make its closest approach at a distance of about 1.25 million miles (2 million kilometers) - or 5 1/4 times the distance from Perseverance rover's SuperCam science instrument delivers first results
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The first readings from the SuperCam instrument aboard NASA's Perseverance rover have arrived on Earth. SuperCam was developed jointly by the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico and a consortium of French research laboratories under the auspices of the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES). The instrument delivered data to the French Space Agency's operations center in Toulouse that includes the first audio of laser zaps on another planet.
"It is amazing to see SuperCam working so well on Mars," said Roger Wiens, the principal investigator for Perseverance's SuperCam instrument from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. "When we first dreamed up this instrument eight years ago, we worried that we were being way too ambitious.
New Vacuum Solar Telescope reveals acceleration of magnetic reconnection
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Magnetic reconnection shows the reconfiguration of magnetic field geometry. It plays an elemental role in the rapid release of magnetic energy and its conversion to other forms of energy in magnetized plasma systems throughout the universe.
Researchers led by Dr. Li Leping from National Astronomical Observatories of Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) analyzed the evolution of magnetic reconnection and its nearby filament.
The solar wind, explained
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The solar wind is a flow of particles that comes off the sun at about one million miles per hour and travels throughout the entire solar system. First proposed in the 1950s by University of Chicago physicist Eugene Parker, the solar wind is visible in the halo around the sun during an eclipse and sometimes when the particles hit the Earth's atmosphere—as the aurora borealis, or northern lights.
While the solar wind protects Earth from other harmful particles coming from space, storms can also threaten our satellite and communications networks.
What is the solar wind?
The surface of the sun is blisteringly hot at 6,000 degrees Fahrenheit—but its atmosphere, called the corona, is more than a thousand times hotter. It is also incredibly active; those flares and loops are the halo you see around the sun when there's an eclipse.
The corona is so hot that the sun's gravity can't hold it, so particles are flung off into space and travel throughout the solar system in every direction. As the sun spins, burns and burps, it creates complex swirls and eddies of particles. These particles, mostly protons and electrons, are traveling about a million miles per hour as they pass Earth.
A dose of Moonlight: A mission to to provide telecommunications and navigation services for the Moon
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An orange pouch and a yellow cable are paving the way for missions to the moon. By monitoring space radiation and enabling faster communications, the Dosis-3D experiment and the Columbus Ka-band or ColKa terminal, respectively, are providing the insights needed to enable safer missions father out in space.
Orange Dosis-3D pouches are everywhere in the Columbus laboratory on the International Space Station. A series of active and passive dosimeters, they measure space radiation inside the module as well as how it penetrates the Space Station's walls.
Radiation levels in space are up to 15 times higher than on Earth. As soon as humans leave the protective shield that is Earth's atmosphere, space radiation becomes a serious concern.
The Columbus module is monitored by 11 passive dosimeters. The dosimeters are about the size of a pack of playing cards and attach to the walls of Columbus with Velcro. The detectors record how much radiation has been absorbed in total during the period they are in space.
This experiment has been monitoring radiation levels for a number of years and after each six-month crew rotation, the detectors are replaced to record changes in radiation.
How the habitability of exoplanets is influenced by their rocks
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The weathering of silicate rocks plays an important role to keep the climate on Earth clement. Scientists led by the University of Bern and the Swiss national center of competence in research (NCCR) PlanetS, investigated the general principles of this process. Their results could influence how we interpret the signals from distant worlds—including such that may hint towards life.
The conditions on Earth are ideal for life. Most places on our planet are neither too hot nor too cold and offer liquid water. These and other requirements for life, however, delicately depend on the right composition of the atmosphere.
Gravity mission still unearthing hidden secrets
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Despite ESA’s GOCE mission ending over seven years ago, scientists continue to use this remarkable satellite’s gravity data to delve deep and unearth secrets about our planet. Recent research shows how scientists have combined GOCE data with measurements taken at the surface to generate a new model of Earth’s crust and upper mantle. This is the first time such a model has been created this way – and it is shedding new light on processes of plate tectonics, which, in turn, are related to phenomena such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
