Pasadena CA (JPL) May 04, 2023
Tactical planning started an hour and a half later than usual this morning, because we had to wait for better-illuminated Navcam images of the Ubajara block (seen at bottom center in this image). The Rover Planners needed these better images to determine whether the Ubajara target can be brushed using the DRT, and promptly confirmed that they are GO for brushing! This was good news, becaus

Washington (AFP) May 3, 2023
US senators announced a major cross-party effort Wednesday to combat China's growing global influence by limiting the flow of investment and state-of-the-art technology to the Asian giant while deterring any potential threat to Taiwan. The push comes after President Joe Biden signed a package last year aimed at boosting competition with Washington's main economic rival, with $52 billion in n

Washington DC (SPX) May 04, 2023
This year and next, Americans will have the extraordinary opportunity to witness two solar eclipses as both will be visible throughout the continental U.S. On Oct. 14, 2023, the moon will obscure all but a small annulus of the sun, producing a "ring of fire" eclipse. On April 8, 2024, the eclipse will be total in a band stretching from Texas to Maine. Both occurrences promise to be remarka

Colorado Springs, United States (AFP) May 4, 2023
The next time NASA goes to the Moon, it intends to stay. Under the Artemis program, the US space agency plans to maintain a human presence, for the very first time, on a celestial body other than Earth. But building a lunar base is no small feat. It will need power generators, vehicles and habitats, and the space industry is racing to meet the technological challenges. "It's the Super Bo

San Jose CA (SPX) May 04, 2023
Momentus Inc. (NASDAQ: MNTS) has signed an agreement with Hello Space, an internet of things (IoT) through satellite tech company, to carry a hosted payload of a demo deployer carrying four pocketqube satellites on the Vigoride-7 mission targeted to launch on the SpaceX Transporter-9 mission no earlier than October 2023. Hello Space is a satellite IoT service provider company capable of cr

Bologna, Italy (SPX) May 04, 2023
They are called UFOs, but aliens have nothing to do with them. They are the ultra-fast outflows: space winds that emerge from the surroundings of supermassive black holes and blow at speeds close to that of light. An international research team has explored this still little-understood phenomenon, hunting for these gas emissions, which are crucial to understanding the mechanisms regulating the b

Paris (AFP) May 3, 2023
Scientists said Wednesday that they have observed a dying star swallowing a planet for the first time, offering a preview of Earth's expected fate in around five billion years. But when the Sun finally does engulf Earth, it will cause only a "tiny perturbation" compared to this cosmic explosion, the US astronomers said. Most planets are believed to meet their end when their host star run

Vienna VA (SPX) May 03, 2023
Spire Global, Inc. (NYSE: SPIR) has announced the launch of its new Deep Navigation Analytics (DNA) Platform, a centralized, space-powered hub that delivers essential insights to maritime stakeholders through three layers: maritime weather data APIs, actionable intelligence APIs, decision support solutions and visualizations. The platform utilizes radio occultation (RO) data acquired by th

Chicago IL (SPX) May 04, 2023
Inside a lab, scientists marvel at a strange state that forms when they cool down atoms to nearly absolute zero. Outside their window, trees gather sunlight and turn them into new leaves. The two seem unrelated-but a new study from the University of Chicago suggests that these processes aren't so different as they might appear on the surface. The study, published in PRX Energy on April 28,

Munich, Germany (SPX) May 04, 2023
When Edwin Hubble observed distant galaxies in the 1920s, he made the groundbreaking discovery that the universe is expanding. It was not until 1998, however, that scientists observing Type Ia supernovae further discovered that the universe is not just expanding but has begun a phase of accelerating expansion. "To explain this acceleration, we need a source," says Joe Mohr, astrophysicist