Pasadena CA (JPL) Jun 10, 2021
As the coronavirus pandemic slowed global commerce to a crawl in early 2020, emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) - which create ozone, a danger to human health and to climate - decreased 15% globally, with local reductions as high as 50%, according to a study led by scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. As a result of the lower NOx emissions, by June 2020, global

Greenbelt MD (SPX) Jun 10, 2021
Sunlight traveling through the atmosphere becomes polarized in different ways as it is scattered by water vapor, ice, aerosols created by living organisms, dust, and other particulates. Measuring that polarization lets scientists extrapolate what is in the atmosphere, and the next generation of polarimeters for the job could benefit from a new technology developed by researchers at Harvard

Berlin, Germany (SPX) Jun 10, 2021
UP42 and SI Imaging Services (SIIS) of Daejeon, South Korea, have signed an agreement to make imagery from the KOMPSAT satellites available on the UP42 marketplace and developer platform. The deal includes high-resolution optical imagery from KOMPSAT-3 and -3A, and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data from KOMPSAT-5. KOMPSAT imagery is a valuable addition to the more than 50 geospatial data

Tucson AZ (SPX) Jun 10, 2021
The widely studied metallic asteroid known as 16 Psyche was long thought to be the exposed iron core of a small planet that failed to form during the earliest days of the solar system. But new University of Arizona-led research suggests that the asteroid might not be as metallic or dense as once thought, and hints at a much different origin story. Scientists are interested in 16 Psyche bec

Beijing, China (SPX) Jun 10, 2021
China's upcoming manned mission - Shenzhou XII - is expected to set off from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China's Gobi Desert to the Tianhe core module of the nation's space station. A Long March 2F carrier rocket with the Shenzhou XII spacecraft on top of it was moved to its launch pad at the space complex on Wednesday evening, according to the China Manned Space Agency

Washington DC (UPI) Jun 9, 2021
New space missions being launched this summer will attempt to revolutionize space communications by using laser beams to quickly transmit large amounts of data, including high-definition video from the moon. Two missions by the U.S. government will test such lasers, which use invisible, infrared light beams. NASA's Laser Communications Relay Demonstration will explore the best wa

Washington DC (UPI) Jun 9, 2021
A pair of engineering teams from Wake Forest University took home first and second place in NASA's Vascular Tissue Challenge, the space agency announced Wednesday. Both teams used slightly different techniques to 3D-print vascularized liver tissue in the lab. Now, the two engineering teams will get the opportunity to test their breakthrough tissue models on the International Space Stati

Washington DC (UPI) Jun 9, 2021
NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity moved to a new landing site about 115 feet away from its original position on the Red Planet during its seventh flight. The space agency announced Tuesday's successful new flight, along with a photo the aerial drone shot of its own shadow during flight. "With each flight we gain additional real world info on the performance of the rotor and its th

Pasadena CA (JPL) Jun 10, 2021
On June 1, NASA's Perseverance Mars rover kicked off the science phase of its mission by leaving the "Octavia E. Butler" landing site. Until recently, the rover has been undergoing systems tests, or commissioning, and supporting the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter's month of flight tests. During the first few weeks of this first science campaign, the mission team will drive to a low-lying scenic

Research based on ice-thickness data from ESA’s CryoSat and Envisat missions along with a new model of snow has revealed that sea ice in the coastal regions of the Arctic may be thinning twice as fast as thought.