Washington DC (UPI) Aug 3, 2021
Sounding like an excited new parent, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson declared during a press briefing Wednesday that the agency's Artemis mission is ready to take its first physical steps to return to the moon and sometime later head to Mars. Laying out an effort that will include international and commercial partners, Nelson said Artemis I will take off for months-long orbiting around t

Pasadena CA (JPL) Aug 03, 2022
Newly installed on the space station, the instrument, called EMIT, will help answer questions about how mineral dust from Earth's arid regions affects climate. After being installed on the exterior of the International Space Station, NASA's Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) mission has provided its first view of Earth. The milestone, called "first light," took place at

Baltimore MD (SPX) Aug 03, 2022
A new study in Science Advances led by UMBC's Tianle Yuan used satellite data from 2003 - 2020 to determine the effect of fuel regulations on pollution from cargo ships. The research team's data revealed significant changes in sulfur pollution after regulations went into effect in 2015 and 2020. Their extensive data set can also contribute to answering a bigger question: How do pollutants and ot

Huntsville AL (SPX) Aug 03, 2022
NASA data scientist Dr. Manil Maskey has a calm demeanor and a ready smile. He's also a trailblazer. With peers from around the world, he has created an unprecedented tool to bring our planet down to Earth. The Earth Observing Dashboard is a user-friendly interactive computer interface for exploring the planet and tracking its changes over time. This knowledge can help us understand our ow

Pasadena CA (JPL) Aug 03, 2022
When the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano erupted on Jan. 15, it sent a tsunami racing around the world and set off a sonic boom that circled the globe twice. The underwater eruption in the South Pacific Ocean also blasted an enormous plume of water vapor into Earth's stratosphere - enough to fill more than 58,000 Olympic-size swimming pools. The sheer amount of water vapor could be enough to t

Washington DC (SPX) Aug 04, 2022
Astra Space, Inc. (NASDAQ: ASTR) has entered into a common stock purchase agreement with B. Riley Principal Capital II, LLC ("B. Riley Principal Capital II"). The agreement governs a Committed Equity Facility that provides Astra the right, in its discretion and without obligation, to sell and issue up to $100 million of its Class A common stock over the course of 24 months to B. Riley Principal

Austin TX (SPX) Aug 04, 2022
Slingshot Aerospace, Inc., a company building space simulation and analytics products to accelerate space sustainability, has announced that the company has acquired Numerica's Space Domain Awareness (SDA) division and UK-based Seradata. Numerica's SDA division includes the world's first and only commercial low Earth orbit (LEO) to geosynchronous orbit (GEO) daytime and nighttime optical s

Sydney (AFP) Aug 4, 2022
A charred chunk of space junk found jutting from a paddock by an Australian sheep farmer was confirmed to be part of one of Elon Musk's SpaceX missions by authorities Thursday. The ethereal-looking debris, believed to have plummeted to Earth on July 9, was found last week in Dalgety - a remote area near Australia's Snowy Mountains, about five hours' drive southwest of Sydney. "It was ki

Tucson AZ (SPX) Aug 04, 2022
As satellites crawl across the sky, they reflect light from the sun back down to Earth, especially during the first few hours after sunset and the first few hours before sunrise. As more companies launch networks of satellites into low-Earth orbit, a clear view of the night sky is becoming rarer. Astronomers, in particular, are trying to find ways to adapt. With that in mind, a team of Uni

Washington DC (UPI) Aug 04, 2022
United Launch Alliance launched a missile warning satellite for the U.S. Space Force on Thursday morning. ULA launched SBIRS GEO-6, into orbit on its Atlas V rocket on time at 6:29am. The SBIRS GEO-6 is an enhanced satellite built by Lockheed Martin that uses the LM 2100 Combat Bus to provide "even greater resiliency and cyber-hardening against growing threats"