Copernical Team
Mars helicopter makes 4th flight, gets extra month of flying
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After proving powered, controlled flight is possible on the Red Planet, NASA's Mars Ingenuity helicopter has new orders: scout ahead of the Perseverance rover to assist in its search for past signs of microbial life.
The next phase extends the rotocraft's mission beyond the original month-long technology demonstration. Now, the goal is to assess how well flyers can help future exploration of Mars and other worlds.
"We're going to gather information on the operational support capability of the helicopter while Perseverance focuses on its science mission," Lori Glaze, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, told reporters Friday.
Lithuania becomes ESA Associate Member state
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Lithuania signed an Association Agreement with ESA on 28 April 2021.
This Association Agreement between ESA and the Government of the Republic of Lithuania, builds on the successful results achieved under the previous frameworks of cooperation and enters into force for a duration of seven years. Comprising 18 Articles and two Annexes, it orchestrates the strengthening of Lithuania’s relations with ESA.
Lessons learnt from simulated strike
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In an alternate reality playing out at this year’s international Planetary Defense Conference, a fictional asteroid crashes over Europe, 'destroying' a region about 100 km wide near the Czech Republic and German border. The scenario was imagined, but the people who took part are very real, and the lessons learnt will shape our ability to respond to dangerous asteroids for years to come.
NASA Wallops May 7 rocket launch exploring energy transport in space
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A mission to explore energy transport in space using a NASA suborbital sounding rocket is scheduled to be conducted the evening of May 7 from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
Launch for the mission is scheduled for 7:58 p.m. EDT with a 40-minute launch window, Friday, May 7, 2021, on a NASA Black Brant XII sounding rocket. Backup launch days run through May 16. The launch may be visible in much of the eastern United States and Bermuda.
The mission, called the KiNETic-scale energy and momentum transport eXperiment, or KiNet-X, is designed to study a very fundamental problem in space plasmas, namely, how are energy and momentum transported between different regions of space that are magnetically connected?
For example, auroras. Auroras are formed when particles in the Earth's near-space environment interact with the atmosphere.
"The electrons in Earth's space environment and in the solar wind have relatively low energies. Yet the aurora is generated by very high energy electrons.
Conférence de presse de Thomas Pesquet depuis l'ISS
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Video:
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L’astronaute de l’ESA Thomas Pesquet a échangé depuis la Station spatiale internationale avec des journalistes européens rassemblés à Paris, le vendredi 30 avril 2021, pour partager ses premiers jours de retour en impesanteur, la vie à bord et les enjeux de la mission Alpha.
A l’issue d’un voyage de près de 24 heures à bord d’une capsule Crew Dragon de SpaceX, il était arrivé samedi 24 avril 2021 sur la Station spatiale internationale. Dans le cadre de sa mission Alpha, il réalisera plus de deux cents expériences scientifiques – y compris 12 nouvelles manipulations du CNES, l’agence spatiale
Week in images: 26 - 30 April 2021
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Week in images: 26 - 30 April 2021
Discover our week through the lens
Earth from Space: Antofagasta, Chile
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Antofagasta, a port city in northern Chile, is featured in this image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.
Glacier avalanches more common than thought
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One tends to think of mountain glaciers as slow moving, their gradual passage down a mountainside visible only through a long series of satellite imagery or years of time-lapse photography. However, new research shows that glacier flow can be much more dramatic, ranging from about 10 metres a day to speeds that are more like that of avalanches, with obvious potential dire consequences for those living below.
Eutelsat invests in OneWeb, future SpaceX rival
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A year after collapsing into bankruptcy, satellite operator OneWeb has revived its goal of providing broadband satellite internet service after European operator Eutelsat said Tuesday it would invest $550 million in the project.
Eutelsat's "roughly 24 percent" stake will allow OneWeb to position itself as a rival to Elon Musk's SpaceX as Eutelsat joins the British government and Indian multi SpaceX successfully launches into space carrying 60 more Starlink satellites
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Elon Musk's SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon 9 rocket carrying an additional 60 Starlink Internet network satellites into space late Wednesday.
The two-stage, 70-meter rocket lifted off at 11:44 p.m. EDT as scheduled from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
Some nine minutes after liftoff, SpaceX recovered its first-stage Falcon 9 booster upon the football field-size d