Perth, Australia (SPX) Jan 24, 2023
Curtin University-led research into the durability and age of an ancient asteroid made of rocky rubble and dust, revealed significant findings that could contribute to potentially saving the planet if one ever hurtled toward Earth. The international team studied three tiny dust particles collected from the surface of ancient 500-metre-long rubble pile asteroid, Itokawa, returned to Earth b

Ann Arbor MI (SPX) Jan 24, 2023
Dark matter remains one of the greatest mysteries of modern physics. It is clear that it must exist, because without dark matter, for example, the motion of galaxies cannot be explained. But it has never been possible to detect dark matter in an experiment. Currently, there are many proposals for new experiments: They aim to detect dark matter directly via its scattering from the constitue

Ramat Gan, Israel (SPX) Jan 24, 2023
Matter outflows in the form of jets are observed in astronomical systems at fast, medium and slow speeds. The fastest jets are highly relativistic, namely travel very close to the speed of light. The origin, as well as many properties of the jets, is uncertain. One of the puzzles, that jet velocities seem to have a bi-modal distribution - some very fast and others slow, with a gap in velocities

Washington DC (SPX) Jan 18, 2023
DARPA has selected Aurora Flight Sciences to move into the detailed design phase of the Control of Revolutionary Aircraft with Novel Effectors (CRANE) program. This follows successful completion of the project's Phase 1 preliminary design, which resulted in an innovative testbed aircraft that used active flow control (AFC) to generate control forces in a wind tunnel test. Phase 2 will focu

Washington DC (SPX) Jan 24, 2023
Today's glass-based ground and space telescopes are limited in their ability to provide resolved imagery of objects in geostationary orbit, 36,000 kilometers above earth. The cost to build and maintain complex optics large enough to effectively track items at that distance is prohibitive. Another key limitation of space-based telescopes is the escalating probability of in-orbit debris causing da

London, UK (SPX) Jan 23, 2023
Is the Milky Way special, or, at least, is it in a special place in the Universe? An international team of astronomers has found that the answer to that question is yes, in a way not previously appreciated. A new study shows that the Milky Way is too big for its "cosmological wall", something yet to be seen in other galaxies. The new research is published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronom

Perth, Australia (SPX) Jan 24, 2023
A vast amount of rocks and other material are hurtling around our Solar System as asteroids and comets. If one of these came towards us, could we successfully prevent the collision between an asteroid and Earth? Well, maybe. But there appears to be one type of asteroid that might be particularly hard to destroy. Asteroids are chunks of rocky debris in space, remnants of a more violen

Video: 01:06:46

Watch a replay of our start-of-the-year press briefing looking ahead at 2023, with ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher and ESA Directors. They presented the next steps of Agenda 2025, looking at new missions, science, space safety and commercialisation of space.

Access the Director General’s slides

Image: Juice launch (artist’s impression)