Copernical Team
NASA is returning to Venus
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NASA has selected two missions, dubbed DAVINCI+ and VERITAS, to study the "lost habitable" world of Venus. Each mission will receive approximately US$500 million for development and both are expected to launch between 2028 and 2030.
It had long been thought there was no life on Venus, due to its extremely high temperatures. But late last year, scientists studying the planet's atmosphere an A new water treatment technology could also help Mars explorers
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A team led by UC Riverside engineers has developed a catalyst to remove a dangerous chemical from water on Earth that could also make Martian soil safer for agriculture and help produce oxygen for human Mars explorers.
Perchlorate, a negative ion consisting of one chlorine atom bonded to four oxygen atoms, occurs naturally in some soils on Earth, and is especially abundant in Martian soil. ExoMars rover twin begins Earth-based mission in 'Mars Terrain Simulator'
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The replica ExoMars rover that will be used in the Rover Operations Control Centre to support mission training and operations is fully assembled and has completed its first drive around the Mars Terrain Simulator at ALTEC, in Turin, Italy.
The rover 'Ground Test Model' (GTM) will play a critical role in the coming months as rover operators prepare for Rosalind Franklin's arrival in Oxia Pl SpaceX plans to launch another SiriusXM satellite Sunday
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Elon Musk's SpaceX plans to launch a communications satellite for SiriusXM on Sunday from Florida in what will be the first such mission since one of the broadcast company's spacecraft failed after launch in December.
The satellite, known as SXM-8, is prepared for liftoff aboard a Falcon 9 rocket during a nearly two-hour window starting at 12:25 a.m. EDT from Complex 40 at Cape Canavera US intel report on UFOs inconclusive: reports
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The conclusion of a classified US intelligence report on the existence of alien UFOs is . . . inconclusive, US media reported Friday.
US military and intelligence found no evidence that seemingly highly advanced unidentified flying objects sighted by military pilots were alien spacecraft, the report concludes, according to The New York Times and other media briefed on it.
But it also cou ExoMars rover twin begins Earth-based mission in ‘Mars Terrain Simulator'
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The replica ExoMars rover that will be used in the Rover Operations Control Centre to support mission training and operations is fully assembled and has completed its first drive around the Mars Terrain Simulator at ALTEC, in Turin, Italy.
Rocket team to discern if our star count should go way up
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The universe contains a mind-boggling number of stars—but scientists' best estimates may be an undercount. A NASA-funded sounding rocket is launching with an improved instrument to look for evidence of extra stars that may have been missed in stellar head counts.
The Cosmic Infrared Background Experiment-2, or CIBER-2, mission is the latest in a series of sounding rocket launches that began in 2009. Led by Michael Zemcov, assistant professor of physics and astronomy at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, CIBER-2's launch window opens at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico on June 6, 2021.
ExoMars rover twin begins Earth-based mission in Mars Terrain Simulator
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The replica ExoMars rover that will be used in the Rover Operations Control Centre to support mission training and operations is fully assembled and has completed its first drive around the Mars Terrain Simulator at ALTEC, in Turin, Italy.
Video: NASA's OSIRIS-REx celebrates perfect departure maneuver from asteroid Bennu
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NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is 328,000 miles, or 528,000 kilometers, away from the asteroid Bennu, having fired its engines on May 10 to initiate a return trip to Earth. The spacecraft is on track to deliver an asteroid sample to Earth on September 24, 2023.
Mission engineers had planned to do a small thruster firing last week to ensure the spacecraft stays on the correct path back to Earth. But, the May 10 departure maneuver was calculated and executed so precisely, the mission team decided not to do a clean-up maneuver last week.
The next possible maneuver adjustment could occur in 2022.
Juice rotation in the clean room
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Video:
00:00:43
Rotating Juice in the clean room at ESA's technical heart in the Netherlands before transfer in the Large Space Simulator.
Juice will undergo environmental testing in ESTEC’s Large Space Simulator to replicate the extreme heating and cooling cycles that the spacecraft will experience on its way to Jupiter.
Once in the Jovian system the mission will spend at least three years making detailed observations of the giant gaseous planet Jupiter and its three large ocean-bearing moons: Ganymede, Callisto and Europa.