Munich, Germany (SPX) Jun 08, 2022
A group of astronomers led by Sarah Bosman from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy have robustly timed the end of the epoch of reionisation of the neutral hydrogen gas to about 1.1 billion years after the Big Bang. Reionisation began when the first generation of stars formed after the cosmic "dark ages", a long period when neutral gas alone filled the Universe without any sources of light. T

Amsterdam. Netherlands (SPX) Jun 08, 2022
Clouds of ultralight particles can form around rotating black holes. A team of physicists from the University of Amsterdam and Harvard University now show that these clouds would leave a characteristic imprint on the gravitational waves emitted by binary black holes. Black holes are generally thought to swallow all forms of matter and energy surrounding them. It has long been known, howeve

Huntsville AL (SPX) Jun 08, 2022
A new study shows a deep connection between some of the largest, most energetic events in the Universe and much smaller, weaker ones powered by our own Sun. The results come from a long observation with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory of Abell 2146, a pair of colliding galaxy clusters located about 2.8 billion light years from Earth. The new study was led by Helen Russell of the Universit

Boston MA (SPX) Jun 08, 2022
A new study shows a deep connection between some of the largest, most energetic events in the Universe and much smaller, weaker ones powered by our own Sun. The results come from a long observation with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory of Abell 2146, a pair of colliding galaxy clusters located about 2.8 billion light years from Earth. The new study was led by Helen Russell of the Universit

London, UK (SPX) Jun 08, 2022
The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory's (Dstl) miniaturised space weather instrumentation suite will be one of the payloads aboard Virgin Orbit which is targeting the first UK satellite launch this summer from Spaceport Cornwall in Newquay. Virgin Orbit's Launcher One rocket takes off horizontally, carried aloft by a modified Boeing 747 jet, named Cosmic Girl. The Coordinated Ionos

Washington DC (SPX) Jun 08, 2022
A joint U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL)/ U.K. Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) experiment is preparing to measure Earth's ionosphere and particle radiation environment as part of the Coordinated Ionospheric Reconstruction CubeSat Experiment (CIRCE) mission. Space Systems Command is partnering with Virgin Orbit National Systems, a U.S.-incorporated, wholly-owned subsidi

Washington DC (SPX) Jun 08, 2022
NASA and SpaceX are standing down from this week's Falcon 9 launch of the CRS-25 cargo mission to the International Space Station. Officials from NASA and SpaceX met today to discuss an issue identified over the weekend and the best path forward. During propellant loading of the Dragon spacecraft, elevated vapor readings of mono-methyl hydrazine (MMH) were measured in an isolated region of

Long Beach CA (SPX) Jun 08, 2022
Satellite launch company Virgin Orbit (Nasdaq: VORB) announces today that a joint mission between the United Kingdom's Defense Science and Technology Laboratory and the United States Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) is expected to be lofted on the first space launch out of Spaceport Cornwall later this year. The government agencies' joint Coordinated Ionospheric Reconstruction CubeSat Exper

Pasadena CA (JPL) Jun 08, 2022
As the season has turned to winter in Jezero Crater, conditions have become increasingly challenging for Ingenuity, which was designed for a short flight-test campaign during the much warmer Martian spring. Increased amounts of dust in the atmosphere, combined with lower daytime temperatures and shorter days, have impacted Ingenuity's energy budget to the point where it is unable to keep itself