Huntsville AL (SPX) Jul 14, 2021
NASA's Near-Earth Asteroid Scout is tucked away safely inside the agency's powerful Space Launch System (SLS) rocket at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The solar sailing CubeSat is one of several secondary payloads hitching a ride on Artemis I, the first integrated flight of the agency's SLS and the Orion spacecraft. NEA Scout, a small spacecraft roughly the size of a large shoebox

Moscow (Sputnik) Jul 14, 2021
The rover, named after the Chinese god of fire, is being used by the Chinese agency to examine Martian soil and atmosphere, take pictures, create maps, and search for water and evidence of past life. The rover is equipped with a variety of equipment and can communicate with Earth via the Tianwen-1 orbiter's "high-speed data relay." The China National Space Administration released five new

Beijing, China (SPX) Jul 14, 2021
China's first meteorological satellite launched in 1988. It was named Fengyun, which roughly translates to "wind and cloud". Since then, 17 more Fengyun meteorological satellites were launched, with seven still in operation, to monitor Earth's wind, clouds and, more recently, extreme weather events such as hurricanes and wildfires. With more than 30 years of Earth observational data freely

Washington DC (SPX) Jul 13, 2021
The Missile Defense Agency deployed two tiny satellites to space June 30 that successfully began communicating with ground stations over the Fourth of July weekend, the first step on the way to an experiment that will eventually see them communicate with each other, a feat that could play a major role in the development of U.S. missile defense technology. The CubeSat Networked Communicatio

Washington DC (AFNS) Jul 13, 2021
The CubeSat Networked Communications Experiment Block 1 - part of MDA's Nanosat Testbed Initiative - uses small, low-cost satellites to demonstrate networked radio communications between nanosatellites while in orbit. MDA will conduct a 90-day demonstration, with a mission extension of up to one year, to ensure the two CubeSats can navigate properly, receive and send signals to radios and networ

Paris (ESA) Jul 14, 2021
The 40-year-old mystery of what causes Jupiter's X-ray auroras has been solved. For the first time, astronomers have seen the entire mechanism at work - and it could be a process occurring in many other parts of the Universe too. Planetary astronomers have studied Jupiter's spectacular X-ray auroral emission for decades. The X-ray 'colours' of these auroras show that they are triggered by

Thuwal, Saudi Arabia (SPX) Jul 14, 2021
A Moon-scanning method that can automatically classify important lunar features from telescope images could significantly improve the efficiency of selecting sites for exploration. There is more than meets the eye to picking a landing or exploration site on the Moon. The visible area of the lunar surface is larger than Russia and is pockmarked by thousands of craters and crisscrossed by ca

Pasadena CA (JPL) Jul 14, 2021
Images snapped on July 5 by NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter on its ambitious ninth flight have offered scientists and engineers working with the agency's Perseverance Mars rover an unprecedented opportunity to scout out the road ahead. Ingenuity provided new insight into where different rock layers begin and end, each layer serving as a time capsule for how conditions in the ancient climate cha

Washington DC (SPX) Jul 14, 2021
NASA is announcing its 2021 Entrepreneurs Challenge to invite fresh ideas and new participants that will lead to new instruments and technologies with the potential to advance the agency's science mission goals. The agency's Science Mission Directorate is seeking novel ideas that focus on priority areas for the commercial sector. The Entrepreneurs Challenge aligns with NASA's goal to foste