Copernical Team
Moon rock on Joe Biden's desk raises hopes for lunar return
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A moon rock that President Joe Biden has placed in the Oval Office came from the last Apollo mission in 1972, raising hopes that he will support a new lunar landing program already underway.
The White House said the moon rock was part of Biden's goal to have the office reflect the best of American accomplishments.
Astronauts chipped the rock from a large boulder at the base of th OSIRIS-REx mission set for May departure from Bennu back to Earth
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On May 10, NASA's Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft will say farewell to asteroid Bennu and begin its journey back to Earth.
During its Oct. 20, 2020, sample collection event, the spacecraft collected a substantial amount of material from Bennu's surface, likely exceeding the mission's requirement of 2 ounces (60 Axiom Space reveals historic first private crew to visit International Space Station
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Axiom Space on Tuesday announced its crew for humankind's first flight of a group of private individuals to a Low Earth Orbit destination - the first-ever entirely private mission proposed to fly to the International Space Station (ISS).
The proposed historic Axiom Mission 1 (Ax-1) will consist of: former NASA astronaut and Axiom vice president Michael Lopez-Alegria as commander; American China's first liquid/solid fueld rocket to make 2021 maiden flight
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Long March-6A, China's first carrier rocket powered by a solid and liquid engine, will make its maiden flight in 2021, its developer said.
Long March-6A, a new generation medium-launch vehicle, can be powered by different numbers of liquid and solid engines to achieve different carrying capacity levels, which is more cost-effective, according to the Eighth Academy of China Aerospace Scienc Virgin Orbit to launch first satellite for Dutch Ministry Of Defense
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Virgin Orbit has been selected by the Dutch space engineering company Innovative Solutions in Space (ISIS) to launch the Royal Netherlands Air Force's (RNLAF) first ever satellite, a 6U CubeSat called BRIK-II.
Designed and integrated by ISIS, BRIK-II will serve as a testbed for various communications experiments and demonstrate how nanosatellites can provide a meaningful contribution to mi 1st private space crew paying $55M each to fly to station
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The first private space station crew was introduced Tuesday: Three men who are each paying $55 million to fly on a SpaceX rocket.
They'll be led by a former NASA astronaut now working for Axiom Space, the Houston company that arranged the trip for next January.
Barbs fly over satellite projects from Musk, Bezos
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A spat erupted Tuesday between Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk as the tech titans' space firms exchanged barbs over their rival satellite internet projects being evaluated by regulators.
Amazon, founded and led by Bezos, put out a statement claiming Musk's rival SpaceX project Starlink was seeking design changes that could "create a more dangerous environment for collisions in space" and also increase radio interference.
Five ways artificial intelligence can help space exploration
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Artificial intelligence has been making waves in recent years, enabling us to solve problems faster than traditional computing could ever allow. Recently, for example, Google's artificial intelligence subsidiary DeepMind developed AlphaFold2, a program which solved the protein-folding problem. This is a problem which has had baffled scientists for 50 years.
Advances in AI have allowed us to make progress in all kinds of disciplines—and these are not limited to applications on this planet. From designing missions to clearing Earth's orbit of junk, here are a few ways artificial intelligence can help us venture further in space.
Astronaut assistants
Do you remember Tars and Case, the assistant robots from the film Interstellar? While these robots don't exist yet for real space missions, researchers are working towards something similar, creating intelligent assistants to help astronauts. These AI-based assistants, even though they may not look as fancy as those in the movies, could be incredibly useful to space exploration.
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Mission Plans for May Asteroid Departure
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On May 10, NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft will say farewell to asteroid Bennu and begin its journey back to Earth. New long-term dataset to analyse global fire trends
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Fire affects an estimated four million square kilometres of Earth’s land each year and is responsible for releasing aerosols and greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Understanding the influence that this has on atmospheric chemistry and representing these emissions in future climate predictions is, however, complex and remains poorly understood. To improve the situation, a team of scientists working as part of ESA’s Climate Change Initiative is using satellite observations, such as from Copernicus Sentinel-3, to gain a global view of land burned by fire.