Copernical Team
Scientists catch exciting magnetic waves in action in the Sun's photosphere
Researchers have confirmed the existence of magnetic plasma waves, known as Alfvén waves, in the Sun's photosphere. The study, published in Nature Astronomy, provides new insights into these fascinating waves that were first discovered by the Nobel Prize winning scientist Hannes Alfvén in 1947.
The vast potential of these waves resides in their ability to transport energy and information over very large distances due to their purely magnetic nature. The direct discovery of these waves in the solar photosphere, the lowest layer of the solar atmosphere, is the first step towards exploiting the properties of these magnetic waves.
The ability for Alfvén waves to carry energy is also of interest for solar and plasma-astrophysics as it could help explain the extreme heating of the solar atmosphere—a mystery that has been unsolved for over a century.
Elusive waves
Alfvén waves form when charged particles (ions) oscillate in response to interactions between magnetic fields and electrical currents.
Within the solar atmosphere bundles of magnetic fields, known as solar magnetic flux tubes, can form.
US space probe Osiris-Rex heads home with asteroid dust
The US space probe Osiris-Rex on Monday left the orbit of the asteroid Bennu, from which it collected dust samples last year, to begin its long journey back to Earth.
The probe still has a vast distance to cover before it lands in the Utah desert on September 24, 2023.
Osiris-Rex is "now moving away over 600 miles an hour from Bennu, on its way home," Dante Lauretta, head of the mission NASA spacecraft begins 2-year trip home with asteroid rubble
With rubble from an asteroid tucked inside, a NASA spacecraft fired its engines and began the long journey back to Earth on Monday, leaving the ancient space rock in its rearview mirror.
The trip home for the robotic prospector, Osiris-Rex, will take two years.
Crew training begins soon for first private trip to ISS
Training of the crew for the first entirely private trip to the International Space Station (ISS) is to begin soon, Axiom Space, the company behind the flight, said Monday at a joint press conference with NASA.
Four astronauts are to be launched to the ISS in late January aboard a rocket built by another space company, Elon Musk's SpaceX.
Only one of the four—NASA veteran Michael Lopez-Alegria—has been in space before.
The other three are businessmen—Larry Conner, an American, Mark Pathy, a Canadian, and Eytan Stibbe, an Israeli.
The mission dubbed Ax-1 is to last around 10 days, said Axiom Space president and CEO Michael Suffredini.
The astronauts will work and live in the American section of the space station and plan to conduct a number of scientific experiments while in orbit.
"We'll be starting what I would call serious training next week," said Lopez-Alegria, the Ax-1 commander.
"From there the pace will pick up, and we'll all be immersed essentially full time in ISS systems and Crew Dragon training starting in the fall.
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft Heads for Earth with Asteroid Sample
After nearly five years in space, NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft is on its way back to Earth with an abundance of rocks and dust from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu. Space weather is difficult to predict - with only an hour to prevent disasters on Earth
Recent developments at the forefront of astronomy allow us to observe that planets orbiting other stars have weather. Indeed, we have known that other planets in our own solar system have weather, in many cases more extreme than our own.
Our lives are affected by short-term atmospheric variations of weather on Earth, and we fear that longer-term climate change will also have a large impact How planets form controls elements essential for life
The prospects for life on a given planet depend not only on where it forms but also how, according to Rice University scientists.
Planets like Earth that orbit within a solar system's Goldilocks zone, with conditions supporting liquid water and a rich atmosphere, are more likely to harbor life. As it turns out, how that planet came together also determines whether it captured and retained First ever discovery of methanol in a warm planet-forming disk
An international team of researchers led by Alice Booth (Leiden University, the Netherlands) have discovered methanol in the warm part of a planet-forming disk. The methanol cannot have been produced there and must have originated in the cold gas clouds from which the star and the disk formed.
Thus, the methanol is inherited. If that is common, it could give the formation of life elsewhere VIPER Hits the SLOPEs
Before NASA's next lunar rover paves the way for long-term human exploration of the Moon, it must first pass a series of rigorous mobility tests along the banks of Lake Erie.
The Simulated Lunar Operations Laboratory, or SLOPE Lab, at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland is home to multiple sandboxes that mimic the lunar and Martian terrain to evaluate the traction performance and lim NASA's OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft Heads for Earth with Asteroid Sample
After nearly five years in space, NASA's Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft is on its way back to Earth with an abundance of rocks and dust from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu.
On Monday, May 10, at 4:23 p.m. EDT the spacecraft fired its main engines full throttle for seven minutes - its most significant maneuver si 
