Copernical Team
Perseverance 'SuperCam' begins hunt for past life on Mars
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The bundle of instruments known as SuperCam on board the Perseverance Mars rover has collected its first samples in the hunt for past life on the Red Planet, mission scientists said Wednesday.
The return to Earth years from now of the rocks and soil it retrieves "will give scientists the Holy Grail of planetary exploration," Jean-Yves le Gall, president of France's National Centre for Space Hope Probe captures new images of Mars with the Emirates Ultraviolet Spectrometer
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The Emirates Mars Mission (EMM), the first interplanetary exploration undertaken by an Arab nation, achieved another major milestone on February 20th, 2021 with the return of the first science images from the Emirates Ultraviolet Spectrometer (EMUS), one of three science instruments on board the Hope probe. The Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) released these images to mark one month sinc NASA Targets March 18 for SLS Hot Fire Test
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NASA is targeting Thursday, March 18 for the second hot fire of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket's core stage at NASA's Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.
After performing tests to demonstrate that a recently repaired liquid oxygen pre-valve was working, the team has continued to prepare the core stage, its four RS-25 engines, and the B-2 test stand for the second ho Ideas for future NASA missions searching for extraterrestrial civilizations
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A researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) is the lead author of a study with proposals for 'technosignatures'—evidence for the use of technology or industrial activity in other parts of the Universe—for future NASA missions. The article, published in the specialized journal Acta Astronautica, contains the initial conclusions of a meeting of experts in the search for intelligent extraterrestrial life, sponsored by the space agency to gather advice about this topic.
In the article, several ideas are presented to search for technosignatures that would indicate the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations, from the most humdrum, such as the presence of industrial pollution in the atmosphere or large swarms of satellites, to hypothetical gigantic space engineering work, such as heat shields to fend off climate change, or Dyson spheres for optimum use of the light from the local star.
Space sustainability and debris physics: The role of reentries
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What goes up, nearly always comes back down. When it comes to the objects we send to space, atmospheric reentries are actually a fundamental tool in minimizing the creation of space debris and ensuring a sustainable future in space.
Objects in low-Earth orbit, affected by the 'drag' forces caused by Earth's atmosphere, gradually lower in altitude and then make a rapid and firey descent towards Earth.
Small objects disintegrate as they reenter due to the immense friction and heat created, but parts of larger bodies can reach the ground so should be controlled to land over uninhabited regions.
Join Stijn Lemmens and Jorge del Rio Vera to find out more about why this matters in the joint ESA-UN podcast that narrates this infographic.
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In first, scientists trace fastest solar particles to their roots on the Sun
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Zipping through space at close to the speed of light, Solar Energetic Particles, or SEPs, are one of the main challenges for the future of human spaceflight.
How do you get power into your lunar base? With a tower of concrete several kilometers high
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It sounds like science fiction, but building an enormous tower several kilometers high on the lunar surface may be the best way to harness solar energy for long-term lunar exploration. Such towers would raise solar panels above obstructing geological features on the lunar surface, and expand the surface area available for power generation.
A successful future moon base of any size is going to require two key resources: water and power. Ever since evidence of frozen water ice was discovered in the depths of permanently shadowed craters near the moon's South Pole, the polar region has become NASA's primary target for future moon landings. Water can be used for drinking, of course, and growing plants, but also as rocket fuel or separated out at the molecular level to make breathable oxygen. But while the moon's water is found deep in the crater basins, power generation will likely come from high up, above the crater rims, where 'peaks of eternal light' are known to exist. These peaks almost never experience shadow, and would be ideal locations to place solar cells to power water-extraction activities on the moon.
How scientists found rare fireball meteorite pieces on a driveway—and what they can teach us
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As people in the UK were settling down to watch the late evening news on February 28, a fresh news story, quite literally, appeared in the night sky. A large and very bright fireball was seen over southern England and northern France at 21:54 GMT. It was recorded by many doorbell webcams, so it was a very well-observed fireball. More importantly, it was also captured by the automated cameras of the UK Meteor Observation Network and similar networks.
Working with colleagues in France and Australia, the meteor-watchers worked out the fireball's trajectory and determined where the meteorite pieces could be located, just north of Cheltenham in the UK. Based on their calculations, Ashley King, a specialist in meteorites at the Natural History Museum in London, made an appeal on local TV and radio stations for information about any unusual black rocks seen to have fallen from the sky.
The role of reentries
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Using reentries to clean up A dose of Moonlight
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An orange pouch and a yellow cable are paving the way for missions to the Moon. By monitoring space radiation and enabling faster communications, the Dosis-3D experiment and the Columbus Ka-band or ColKa terminal, respectively, are providing the insights needed to enable safer missions father out in space.
Orange Dosis-3D pouches are everywhere in the Columbus laboratory on the International Space Station. A series of active and passive dosimeters, they measure space radiation inside the module as well as how it penetrates the Space Station’s walls.
Radiation levels in space are up to 15 times higher than on Earth. As soon