Tokyo, Japan (AFP) Jun 01, 2024
Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa said on Saturday he has cancelled his journey around the Moon on a SpaceX rocket, a voyage that had boasted an artist-filled crew, because of development delays. Maezawa announced in 2018 the "dearMoon" lunar orbital mission, travelling on SpaceX's Starship rocket, which was scheduled to take place by the end of 2023. However, the dearMoon's websit

Plainsboro NK (SPX) May 31, 2024
Harnessing energy from plasma requires a precise understanding of its behavior during fusion to keep it hot, dense and stable. A new theoretical model about a plasma's edge, which can become unstable and bulge, brings the prospect of commercial fusion power closer to reality. "The model refines the thinking on stabilizing the edge of the plasma for different tokamak shapes," said Jason Par

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Jun 01, 2024
Mars has a distinct structure in its mantle and crust, with identifiable reservoirs, as revealed by meteorites analyzed by scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and their colleagues. Meteorites formed around 1.3 billion years ago and ejected from Mars have been collected by scientists from Antarctica and Africa over recent decades. Scripps Oceanography geologist

Sydney, Australia (SPX) Jun 01, 2024
China launched a communication satellite for Pakistan on Thursday night from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan province, reported China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp (CASC). Carrying the Pakistani satellite called PakSat MM1, a Long March 3B rocket lifted off at 8:12 pm at the launch complex and soon placed the satellite into a geosynchronous orbit, the State-owned con

Paris, France (SPX) Jun 01, 2024
Europe's newest rocket, Ariane 6, is set to launch soon, carrying multiple space missions with unique objectives. This inaugural flight will highlight Ariane 6's versatility and heavy-lift capabilities. Among the payloads is SIDLOC, an experiment by the Greek non-profit Libre Space Foundation (LSF), aimed at enhancing space safety through rapid identification and localization of spacecraft.

Paris, France (SPX) Jun 01, 2024
ESA's Young Professionals Satellite, YPSat, being checked out in a cleanroom at Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana, in preparation for the inaugural launch of Ariane 6, coming soon. YPSat is a project run in its entirety by ESA Young Professionals to give them direct early experience in designing, building and testing hardware for space. Equipped with cameras - seen here at the top of the

Paris, France (SPX) Jun 01, 2024
Lunar I-Hab, the next European habitat in lunar orbit as part of the Gateway, has recently undergone critical tests to explore and improve human living conditions inside the space module. ESA and NASA astronauts collaborated with Thales Alenia Space to evaluate the ergonomics and habitability of the Lunar I-Hab module in Turin, Italy. This milestone, known as Human-in-the-Loop (HITL), is a

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Jun 01, 2024
NASA announced Friday it selected three industry proposals to help develop technologies for future large space telescopes and plan for the agency's Habitable Worlds Observatory mission concept, which could be the first space telescope designed to search for life outside our solar system. The mission aims to directly image Earth-like planets around stars similar to our Sun and study their a

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Jun 01, 2024
Crews rotated to vertical then lifted NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft from its protective shipping container after it arrived at the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility (PHSF) at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on May 28. The spacecraft, which will collect data to help scientists determine if Jupiter's icy moon Europa could support life, arrived in a United States Air Force

Paris, France (SPX) Jun 01, 2024
Recent research conducted by Riccardo Valdarnini of SISSA's Astrophysics and Cosmology group challenges the standard model by suggesting that dark matter may be self-interacting. The study, published in "Astronomy and Astrophysics" (A&A), used numerical simulations to analyze the giant cluster merger "El Gordo," located seven billion light years away. The findings indicate that the physical sepa