While the climate crisis is, unfortunately, a reality, it is all too easy to assume that every aspect of our changing world is a consequence of climate change. Assumptions play no role in key environmental assessments and mitigation strategies such as we will see in the upcoming UN climate change COP-26 conference – it’s the science and hard facts that are critical. New research published this week is a prime example of facts that matter. Using model projections combined with satellite data from ESA’s Climate Change Initiative, this latest research shows that the global rise in the temperature of

Video: 00:03:03 The Ariane 6 launch complex is a marvel of engineering. Take a tour at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana.

Boston MA (SPX) Oct 18, 2021
In the early solar system, a "protoplanetary disk" of dust and gas rotated around the sun and eventually coalesced into the planets we know today. A new analysis of ancient meteorites by scientists at MIT and elsewhere suggests that a mysterious gap existed within this disk around 4.567 billion years ago, near the location where the asteroid belt resides today. The team's results, ap

Honolulu HI (SPX) Oct 18, 2021
Strike-slip faulting, the type of motion common to California's well-known San Andreas Fault, was reported recently to possibly occur on Titan, Saturn's largest moon. New research, led by planetary scientists from the University of Hawai?i at Manoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST), suggests this tectonic motion may be active on Titan, deforming the icy surface. On m

Paris, France (SPX) Oct 18, 2021
Whether Venus, one of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets, ever had oceans remains an unsolved puzzle. Although an American study hypothesized that it did, this is now challenged in a paper published on October 14, 2021 in Nature, involving in particular scientists from the CNRS and University of Versailles-Saint Quentin-en-Yvelines1 (UVSQ). Using a state-of-the-art climate model,

Potsdam, Germany (SPX) Oct 18, 2021
Not all ice is the same. The solid form of water comes in more than a dozen different - sometimes more, sometimes less crystalline - structures, depending on the conditions of pressure and temperature in the environment. Superionic ice is a special crystalline form, half solid, half liquid - and electrically conductive. Its existence has been predicted on the basis of various models and has alre

Bremenw, Germany (SPX) Oct 18, 2021
Developing greenhouse systems is of great importance and requires Bio-regenerative Life Support Systems (BLSS) to ensure that the lives of crew members are sustained. Two new prototypes of a nutrient mixing system for future Moon and Mars greenhouse modules have now been completed and installed following a successful design and development phase between Priva and the German Aerospace Center (Deu

Beijing (AFP) Oct 18, 2021
China on Monday denied a report it had recently launched a hypersonic missile, saying it tested a spacecraft to trial reusable technologies. The Financial Times reported Saturday that Beijing had launched a nuclear-capable missile in August that circled the Earth at low orbit before narrowly missing its target. FT sources said the hypersonic missile was carried by a Long March rocket and

Berlin, Germany (SPX) Oct 18, 2021
On 1 October 2021, an S50 solid-propellant rocket motor, which will form the first two stages of the new VLM-1 launch vehicle, successfully completed a static firing test in the operational area of Usina Coronel Abner (UCA), in Sao Jose dos Campos, Sao Paulo state, Brazil. The test was conducted by an engineering team from the Aeronautics and Space Institute, which is headquartered in Sao Jose d