Copernical Team
NASA astronauts spend unexpected July 4 on the International Space Station
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Astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore spent an unexpected Fourth of July aboard the International Space Station—but it was hardly a patriotic display of engineering prowess.
The two NASA astronauts docked with the orbiting lab June 6 for what was supposed to be an eight-day mission, but their return home may be delayed for months in what has become a star-crossed test flight for Boeing's new Starliner capsule.
Not only was the launch of the spacecraft with astronauts aboard for the first time repeatedly delayed because of multiple problems, but NASA and Boeing are taking a cautious approach in returning the pair to Earth largely because of five thrusters that malfunctioned during docking.
Four of the tiny engines that direct the craft in space are now working properly, but engineers don't have a clear understanding of what caused the shutdown, so they have decided to conduct ground tests at NASA's White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico, NASA officials said. The tests will put a Starliner thruster through its paces in a replicated space environment.
The delay also will allow engineers to further study a helium leak in the capsule's propulsion system that was first detected before launch and worsened as Starliner made its way up to the space station roughly 250 miles above Earth.
Juice's lunar-Earth flyby link to blog
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Blog: Juice's lunar-Earth flyby
Follow for the latest updates as ESA's Jupiter mission swings through the Earth system this summer
Highlights from ESA’s first open day in the UK
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Video:
00:02:54
On Saturday 29 June, thousands of visitors made their way to ESA’s European Centre for Space Applications and Telecommunications (ECSAT), as part of the very first ESA open day to be held in the UK.
ECSAT is located at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire and the ESA open day formed part of the campus-wide Harwell open week.
The open day, hosted by ESA’s Magali Vaissiere Conference Centre, featured fascinating talks and activities that enabled people to experience first-hand how ESA is pushing the boundaries of exploration and using space to improve life on Earth. It also showcased the many career
The Young Professional Satellite - From Theory to Reality (episode 2)
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Video:
00:14:53
In the second episode of this docu series, we take a closer look into what it took to build ESA’s Young Professional Satellite (YPSat). YPSat’s mission objectives are to capture the key moments of Ariane 6’s inaugural flight and take in-orbit pictures of Earth and space. To achieve this, the satellite requires the multiple sub-systems to work in harmony and adhere to a pre-defined mission sequence.
This episode zooms in four of the sub-systems: the Wake-Up System (WUS), Battery, On-Board Computer (OBC) and Telecommunications.
Running at ultra low power, the WUS circuit board was designed, tested and manufactured specifically
Ariane 6 first passengers
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Ariane 6 first passengers Space Team Europe for Ariane 6: Alexis Van Lysebeth
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Video:
00:07:35
They say it takes a village to raise a child. To launch a rocket, we have the combined expertise and passion of Space Team Europe. Alexis Van Lysebeth is one of many making the first Ariane 6 launch possible and has been interviewed as part of a series highlighting some of the people that make up this dream team.
Working for Belgian company SABCA, Alexis is part of the team supplying the actuation systems for Ariane 6. The actuators have been upgraded for Ariane 6 and will be electromechanical – meaning electiricy is used to turn them on
Sidus Space and Stennis complete key objectives of in-space payload mission
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Sidus Space, Inc. (NASDAQ: SIDU) has announced that in partnership with the space agency Stennis Space Center, the primary objectives of the the space agency Autonomous Satellite Technology for Resilient Applications (ASTRA) payload mission were successfully met on July 1, 2024.
Collaborating closely with the the space agency Stennis Autonomous Systems Laboratory (ASL) team, Sidus Space co Leaf Space enables Sateliot to scale without significant capex in the ground segment
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Sateliot, the first company to operate a low-Earth orbit (LEO) nanosatellite constellation with 5G IoT standards and that extends coverage of Mobile Telecom Operators to any place in the planet, has successfully integrated its satellite communication stack with Leaf Space's Ground Segment as a Service (GSaaS) Network. This milestone is crucial for the upcoming Transporter-11 mission by SpaceX, d Cosmic Shielding protects Nvidia Ai hardware in upcoming Spacex launch
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Cosmic Shielding Corporation (CSC), providers of the worlds leading space radiation shielding technologies, will be utilized to develop an AI-capable space computer that uses the Nvidia Jetson Orin NX GPU. This will mark the first time a GPU from the latest Nvidia Orin ecosystem has been sent to space and will be part of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base, Califor Scientists reveal the density differences of sub-Neptunes due to resonance
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The majority of stars in our galaxy host planets, with sub-Neptunes, which are planets sized between Earth and Neptune, being the most common. Estimating their density has been a significant challenge for scientists because the method used to measure their mass highlights two distinct populations: dense and less dense. Recent work by the NCCR PlanetS, the University of Geneva (UNIGE), and the Un