Boca Chica TX (AFP) Mar 15, 2024
The world's most powerful rocket Starship successfully blasted on its third test flight Thursday, in a live streamed event watched by two million people. Lift-off from SpaceX's Starbase in southeast Texas came around 8:25 am local time (1325 GMT). The mega rocket is vital to NASA's plans for landing astronauts on the Moon later this decade - and Elon Musk's hopes of eventually colon

The shoebox-sized Milani CubeSat, which will perform close-up mineral prospecting of the Dimorphos asteroid, is ready for delivery to ESA’s Hera asteroid mission for planetary defence. The spacecraft will carry Milani and a second CubeSat, the Juventas radar imaging spacecraft for probing into the target asteroid, which together will be ESA’s first CubeSats to operate in deep space.

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Climate change exacerbates droughts by making them more frequent, longer, and more severe. This can have a wide range of impacts on the environment, agriculture, ecosystems and communities including water scarcity, crop failure and food shortages.

The upcoming Copernicus Land Surface Temperature Monitoring, LSTM, mission will improve sustainable agricultural productivity in a world of increasing water scarcity and variability.

The mission will carry a high spatial-temporal resolution thermal infrared sensor to provide observations of land-surface temperature.

These data are key to understand and respond to climate variability, manage water resources for agricultural production, predict droughts and also to address land

ESA’s Arctic Weather Satellite has passed its environmental test campaign with flying colours – meaning that the satellite has been declared fit for liftoff and its life in the harsh environment of space.

This new satellite, which is slated for launch in June, has been designed to show how it can improve weather forecasts in the Arctic – a region that currently lacks data for accurate short-term forecasts.

New Orleans LA (SPX) Mar 13, 2024
As NASA prepares for its first crewed Artemis missions, the agency is making preparations to build, test, and assemble the next evolution of its SLS (Space Launch System) rocket. The larger and power powerful version of SLS, known as Block 1B, can send a crew and large pieces of hardware to the Moon in a single launch and is set to debut for the Artemis IV mission. "From the beginning, NAS

Washington DC (SPX) Mar 13, 2024
I recently watched NESC Deputy Director Mike Kirsch stand before a roomful of engineers at the Langley Research Center and tell them that with every passing day, NASA breaks a record: the longest stretch without a major accident in the nation's human spaceflight program since the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during reentry on February 1, 2003. NASA's challenge, he told them, was to make

Washington (AFP) Mar 12, 2024
Four astronauts splashed down off Florida in the Gulf of Mexico on their return to Earth early Tuesday, following a more than six-month mission on the International Space Station. The SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft landed in the waters off Pensacola at 5:47 am (0947 GMT), with a NASA thermal camera showing all four of its drogue parachutes had deployed for the night-time landing after their 1

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Mar 12, 2024
Stratolaunch, LLC, marked a significant achievement on March 9, with the successful completion of the first powered flight of its Talon-A test vehicle, TA-1. This groundbreaking event signifies a crucial advancement in the United States' efforts to develop a privately funded, reusable hypersonic test platform. The maiden flight's objectives encompassed ensuring a safe air-launch release, i

Berkeley CA (SPX) Mar 12, 2024
The particle accelerators that enable high energy physics and serve many fields of science, such as materials, medical, and fusion research, are driven by superconducting magnets that are, to put it simply, quite finicky. Superconductors are a special class of materials which, when cooled below a certain temperature, carry large electrical currents without resistance. If you arrange the ma