With the climate crisis continuing to tighten its grip, nations around the world are making efforts to reduce emissions of climate warming gases. To track action, countries report their greenhouse gas emissions to the UNFCCC – the body responsible for driving global action to combat climate change. While accurate and consistent reporting is crucial, very few countries exploit Earth observation satellite data to check and improve their estimates. Scientists have now devised new ways of comparing national greenhouse gas inventories with independent measurements taken from space.

Washington DC (SPX) Apr 08, 2022
Our universe is a chaotic sea of ripples in space-time called gravitational waves. Astronomers think waves from orbiting pairs of supermassive black holes in distant galaxies are light-years long and have been trying to observe them for decades, and now they're one step closer thanks to NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Fermi detects gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light. An i

Lausanne, Switzerland (SPX) Apr 14, 2022
When it comes to the future of intelligent robots, the first question people ask is often: how many jobs will they make disappear? Whatever the answer, the second question is likely to be: how can I make sure that my job is not among them? In a study just published in Science Robotics, a team of roboticists from EPFL and economists from the University of Lausanne offers answers to both que

Stuttgart, Germany (SPX) Apr 14, 2022
Johannes Kepler Observatory - this will be the name of the new research observatory of the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR). Work is currently underway to put the facility into operation at the Empfingen Innovation Campus. The observatory is a core research facility for the DLR Institute of Technical Physics. In future, it will be used to determine the tra

Paris (ESA) Apr 14, 2022
With help from a cryocooler, Webb's Mid-Infrared Instrument has dropped down to just a few degrees above the lowest temperature matter can reach and is ready for calibration. The James Webb Space Telescope will see the first galaxies to form after the Big Bang, but to do that its instruments first need to get cold - really cold. On 7 April, Webb's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) - a joint d

Baltimore MD (SPX) Apr 14, 2022
Astronomers have identified a rapidly growing black hole in the early universe that is considered a crucial "missing link" between young star-forming galaxies and the first supermassive black holes. They used data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to make this discovery. Until now, the monster, nicknamed GNz7q, had been lurking unnoticed in one of the best-studied areas of the night sky,

Copenhagen, Denmark (SPX) Apr 14, 2022
An international effort led by astrophysicists at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, and the Technical University of Denmark, have identified a distant object with properties that lie in-between those of a galaxy and those of a so-called quasar. The object can be seen as the ancestor of a supermassive black hole, and it was born relatively soon after the Big Bang. Simulations ha

Pasadena CA (JPL) Apr 14, 2022
Drilling is on hold while the rover focuses on driving, so the sampling team is off studying the data we have acquired so far. What kind of information do we get from the drill, and how do the rocks we have drilled so far compare to each other? One of the first things we look at is how difficult it was for the drill to make progress through the rock. The rover has a rotary percussive drill

Houston TX (SPX) Apr 14, 2022
Have you ever felt off-balance after being on amusement rides or gotten motion sickness on a boat? Astronauts feel something similar that can be more intense when they return to Earth from space. Once they land, their whole body - including muscles, bones, inner ear, and organs - starts readjusting to Earth's gravity. Astronauts often report feeling dizzy, lightheaded, nauseated, and off-b

Washington DC (SPX) Apr 14, 2022
NASA will provide coverage of spacewalks Monday, April 18, and Thursday, April 28, as Russian cosmonauts venture outside the International Space Station to activate a new robotic arm attached to the Nauka module. Coverage for both spacewalks will begin at 10 a.m. EDT each day on NASA Television, the NASA app, and agency's website. Each spacewalk is scheduled to begin around 10:25 a.m.