Washington DC (UPI) Mar 14, 2021
NASA on Monday said astronaut Mark Vande Hei would return from the International Space Station aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft as planned, amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The space agency said Vande Hei, who was sent to the ISS in April of last year, is scheduled to land aboard the Soyuz spacecraft in Kazakhstan and return to the United States on a Gulfstream jet - as is customary

Madison WI (SPX) Mar 15, 2022
Elena D'Onghia has spent her career puzzling over the behavior of the Milky Way's closest neighbors, the dwarf galaxies known as the Magellanic Clouds. Their story is an epic tale of twirling streams of gas larger than humans can really imagine. But, like most astronomical phenomena, the Magellanic Clouds are far removed from daily life on Earth. A good 160,000 light years removed, in fact

London, UK (SPX) Mar 15, 2022
British space technology will help pioneer new approaches to energy, communications and resources, thanks to new projects from the UK Space Agency Science and Innovation Minister George Freeman announced the 2 million pound boost for 13 new projects during British Science Week (11-20 March), which aims to inspire interest in and celebrate science, engineering, technology and maths for peop

Seattle WA (SPX) Mar 15, 2022
Astra Space, Inc. (NASDAQ: ASTR) and Spaceflight Inc. ("Spaceflight"), the leading global launch services provider, has announced a multi-launch contract. The first launch under this contract is planned for March 14, 2022, with a window opening at 9:22am PDT / 16:22 UTC out of the Astra Spaceport in Kodiak, Alaska, but may be shifted to March 15, 2022 depending on conditions at the launch site.

Leicester UK (SPX) Mar 15, 2022
UK astronaut Tim Peake officially opened Leicester's pioneering space research, innovation and teaching cluster at a special ceremony on Monday. Space Park Leicester is forecast to contribute 750m pounds a year to the UK space sector over the next decade and is expected to support more than 2,500 direct and indirect jobs in the East Midlands1. The first British European Space Agency

Kjeller, Norway (SPX) Mar 15, 2022
Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI), the prime institution responsible for defence-related research in Norway, has awarded a contract to Exolaunch, a global provider of launch, in-space logistics and deployment services for small satellites, to launch its ARCSAT satellite aboard SpaceX's Falcon 9. The teams of Exolaunch and GomSpace, the ARCSAT's satellite manufacturer, have jus

Boston MA (SPX) Mar 15, 2022
This image from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and ground-based optical telescopes shows an extremely long beam, or filament, of matter and antimatter extending from a relatively tiny pulsar, as reported in our latest press release. With its tremendous scale, this beam may help explain the surprisingly large numbers of positrons, the antimatter counterparts to electrons, scientists have detect

Pasadena CA (JPL) Mar 15, 2022
Due to an issue with the Sol 3410 and 3411 plans, parts of the Sol 3410 plan didn't execute and the planned drive did not occur. But the Sol 3409 contact science activities completed successfully, returning nice MAHLI images of bedrock. Because the rover did not move, the high-gain antenna view of Earth is still occluded, preventing direct communication from Earth and daily uplink. So we w

Laurel MD (SPX) Mar 15, 2022
When the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft discovered abundant molecular oxygen bursting from comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P) in 2015, it puzzled scientists. They had never seen a comet emit oxygen, let alone in such abundance. But most alarming were the deeper implications: that researchers had to account for so much oxygen, which meant reconsidering everything they thought they