Paris (ESA) Jul 02, 2023
September NASA's DART mission returned images of the boulder-strewn Dimorphos moonlet just before impacting it, in an audacious and ultimately successful attempt to shift its orbit around its parent asteroid Didymos. Following on from DART, Hera will carry with it a pair of shoebox-sized 'CubeSats' that conclude their own observations by landing on Dimorphos. Team members have been using D

Moffett Field CA (SPX) Jul 01, 2023
NASA's lunar rover VIPER recently completed another successful round of rigorous tests of the agency's first robotic Moon rover's ability to drive off the Astrobotic Griffin lunar lander and onto the lunar surface. Called an egress, this hours-long operation is one of the most critical and trickiest parts of VIPER's 100-day mission. It could be even trickier if VIPER's off-ramps onto the Moon ar

Huntsville AL (SPX) Jul 01, 2023
The first Artemis astronauts have begun crew training for their Artemis II mission around the Moon, and teams at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, are testing and configuring the flight software for the mega Moon rocket that will launch them on their journey. When NASA's SLS (Space Launch System) launches NASA's Artemis II crew aboard the Orion spacecraft, it will

Gerroa, Australia (SPX) Jul 01, 2023
A recent breakthrough in the field of gravitational wave detection has been achieved by scientists in China, who have found vital evidence of nanohertz gravitational waves, thanks to pulsar timing observations performed with the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST). The study was spearheaded by the Chinese Pulsar Timing Array (CPTA), a collaborative group of researc

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Jul 01, 2023
The European Space Agency's (ESA) Euclid telescope, equipped with a computer from space supplier Beyond Gravity, successfully launched on July 1 aboard a SpaceX Falcon9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA. The mission of the telescope is to delve into the dark universe's composition and evolution, projecting a large-scale map of the Universe across time and space by observing billions of ga

Los Angveles CA (SPX) Jul 01, 2023
The European Space Agency (ESA) has recently re-introduced its specialized photo platform, 'ESA Photolibrary for Professionals', enhanced with a sleek new user interface, advanced search capabilities, and added download options. Users who sign up for an account on this platform can gain access to an extensive selection of professional, high-resolution images - the largest compilation available f

Munich, Germany (SPX) Jul 01, 2023
Rivada Space Networks has joined the #Astra Carta initiative to accelerate space sustainability. Launched by the Sustainable Markets organization, Astra Carta brings to reality a vision for space sustainability outlined by His Majesty King Charles III, when he was the Prince of Wales, at the UK Government's Summit for Space Sustainability in 2022. Following the Global Leaders on Space Sust

Malaga, Spain (SPX) Jul 01, 2023
The amount of space debris has not stopped increasing since the first satellite was launched in 1957. The European Space Agency (ESA) estimates that there are more than 131,000,000 useless space waste objects, between 1 millimeter and 10 centimeters, currently orbiting around the Earth at an average speed of 36,000 kilometers per hour, which come from different sources such as last stages of roc

Santa Barbara CA (SPX) Jul 01, 2023
The universe is expanding; we've had evidence of that for about a century. But just how quickly celestial objects are receding from each other is still up for debate. It's no small feat to measure the rate at which objects move away from each other across vast distances. Since the discovery of cosmic expansion, its rate has been measured and re-measured with increasing precision, with some

Baltimore MD (SPX) Jul 01, 2023
On June 25, 2023, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope turned to famed ringed world Saturn for its first near-infrared observations of the planet. The initial imagery from Webb's NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) is already fascinating researchers. Saturn itself appears extremely dark at this infrared wavelength observed by the telescope, as methane gas absorbs almost all of the sunlight falling