Boca Raton FL (SPX) Jun 29, 2022
Terran Orbital Corporation (NYSE: LLAP), a global leader in satellite solutions, primarily serving the United States and Allied aerospace and defense industries, has announced the successful launch of the CAPSTONE satellite. The Terran Orbital designed and built Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, otherwise known as CAPSTONE, launched this morn

Helsinki, Finland (SPX) Jun 29, 2022
ICEYE, an Earth observation company operating the world's largest synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) satellite constellation, has announced the establishment of a new line of business focused solely on delivering fully operational satellite missions to customers looking for their own orbital SAR capabilities. Governments and large multinational corporations are able to purchase their own radar

Madrid, Spain (SPX) Jun 29, 2022
Space is getting congested and today, active collision avoidance has become a routine task in space operations, relying on validated, accurate and timely space surveillance data. For a typical satellite in LEO, hundreds of conjunction alerts can be expected every week. Processing and filtering these still leaves about two actionable alerts per spacecraft and week requiring detailed follow-up by

Greenbelt MD (SPX) Jun 29, 2022
On the heels of a successful launch on June 26, NASA is set to launch two more sounding rockets from northern Australia during the first half of July. These missions will help astronomers understand how starlight influences a planet's atmosphere, possibly making or breaking its ability to support life as we know it. The two missions will look at Alpha Centauri A and B - two Sun-like stars

Bern, Switzerland (SPX) Jun 29, 2022
Liquid water is an important prerequisite for life to develop on a planet. As researchers from the University of Bern, the University of Zurich and the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS report in a new study, liquid water could also exist for billions of years on planets that are very different from Earth. This calls our currently Earth-centred idea of potentially habitabl

Pasadena CA (JPL) Jun 29, 2022
NASA scientists hope to solve a fundamental mystery about Mars' atmosphere, and you can help. They've organized a project called Cloudspotting on Mars that invites the public to identify Martian clouds using the citizen science platform Zooniverse. The information may help researchers figure out why the planet's atmosphere is just 1% as dense as Earth's even though ample evidence suggests the pl

Washington DC (SPX) Jun 29, 2022
The violent event that likely preceded our Solar System's formation holds the solution to a longstanding meteorite mystery, says new work from Carnegie's Alan Boss published in The Astrophysical Journal. The raw material from which our Solar System was constructed was dispersed when the shock wave from an exploding supernova injected material into a cloud of dust and gas, causing it to col

Chelyabinsk, Russia (SPX) Jun 29, 2022
The largest meteorite observed so far this century entered the Earth's atmosphere above Chelyabinsk in the Southern Urals, Russia on February 15, 2013. Unusually, dust from the surface of this meteorite survived its fall and is being extensively studied. This dust includes some unusually shaped microcrystals of carbon. A study of the morphology and simulations of the formation of these cry

Pasadena CA (JPL) Jun 29, 2022
After a successful drilling of Avanavero, the team is ready to dig even deeper into our investigation of this new drill target. Tosol's plan includes an important part of this process: our initial analysis of the drilled sample with the CheMin instrument. In addition, the team planned three full hours of remote science activities at this new drill site, including a ChemCam LIBS observation

Long Beach CA (SPX) Jun 29, 2022
Virgin Orbit (Nasdaq: VORB) alongside the Brazilian Space Agency has announced Virgin Orbit has been formally granted an operator's license to allow LauncherOne launch operations in Brazil. The license is granted to Virgin Orbit Brasil Ltda. (VOBRA), a newly formed and wholly owned Brazilian subsidiary dedicated to bringing the LauncherOne air-launch rocket system to the Alcantara Launch C