Copernical Team
Rosetta's legacy: how were you inspired?
From inspiring a love for the stars to making a life-changing career move, we want to know how ESA’s Rosetta mission has shaped your life.
Amid Boeing's Starliner troubles, WA space industry thrives
It'd be reasonable to think Washington's space economy has a lot riding on Boeing's Starliner, the spacecraft that left two astronauts stranded on the International Space Station and headed back to Earth with an empty cabin Friday.
The astronauts were scheduled to return on Starliner in June after a week on the ISS, but thruster failures and helium leaks on the way there made NASA decide a trip back on the Boeing spacecraft was too risky. Boeing's troubles with Starliner date back years, including a flawed, unmanned test flight in 2019 that had to be repeated in 2022.
But, outside of some classified satellite jobs that pop up in South King County, Boeing's efforts in the Seattle area are largely centered on its commercial airplane business, according to industry experts. Instead, the biggest players in the Seattle area's space industry are Amazon, Blue Origin and SpaceX.
"The Seattle space ecosystem is small but mighty because we have companies here that cover the entire space supply chain," said Stan Shull, founder of space technology consulting firm Alliance Victory.
Shull said there are the space and tech giants like SpaceX and Amazon manufacturing thousands of satellites in their Starlink and Project Kuiper divisions, respectively, and Blue Origin with its rocket engines and spacecraft.
Below the surface - ExoMars Rosalind Franklin mission
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Watch the second episode of the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover mission – Europe’s ambitious exploration journey to search for past and present signs of life on Mars.
This episode starts with Rosalind searching for traces of life below the martian surface using a ground penetrating radar and a set of cameras.
The rover will dig, collect, and investigate the chemical composition of material collected by a drill. Rosalind Franklin will be the first rover to reach a depth of up to two metres deep below the surface, acquiring samples that have been protected from surface radiation and extreme temperatures.
Voyager 1 team accomplishes tricky thruster swap
Engineers working on NASA's Voyager 1 probe have successfully mitigated an issue with the spacecraft's thrusters, which keep the distant explorer pointed at Earth so that it can receive commands, send engineering data, and provide the unique science data it is gathering.
After 47 years, a fuel tube inside the thrusters has become clogged with silicon dioxide, a byproduct that appears with age from a rubber diaphragm in the spacecraft's fuel tank. The clogging reduces how efficiently the thrusters can generate force. After weeks of careful planning, the team switched the spacecraft to a different set of thrusters.
The thrusters are fueled by liquid hydrazine, which is turned into gases and released in tens-of-milliseconds-long puffs to gently tilt the spacecraft's antenna toward Earth.
AI distinguishes dark matter signals from cosmic noise
Dark matter, an unseen force believed to hold the universe together, constitutes approximately 85% of all matter and 27% of the universe's content. Although its gravitational effects on galaxies and cosmic structures are well-documented, the true nature of dark matter remains elusive.
A dominant theory posits that dark matter could be made up of particles that interact only through gravity Parker Solar Probe Lines Up for Final Venus Flyby
NASA's Parker Solar Probe executed a short maneuver on Aug. 26 that kept the spacecraft on course for the mission's seventh and final planned Venus flyby on Nov. 6.
Operating on preprogrammed commands, Parker fired its small directional thrusters for about 17 seconds, changing its velocity by less than a mile per hour, and setting its trajectory some 386 miles (593 kilometers) closer to a NASA's Hubble, Chandra find supermassive black hole duo
Like two Sumo wrestlers squaring off, the closest confirmed pair of supermassive black holes have been observed in tight proximity. These are located approximately 300 light-years apart and were detected using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory. These black holes, buried deep within a pair of colliding galaxies, are fueled by infalling gas and dust, causing them to s Massive merger could explain origin of Milky Way's supermassive black hole
The mystery of how supermassive black holes, which can be millions of times more massive than the sun and sit at the heart of most galaxies, came to exist is one of the great questions in astrophysics.
Researchers from the Nevada Center for Astrophysics at UNLV (NCfA) have uncovered new evidence that the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, called Sagittarius A' (Sgr A') Formation of super-Earths proven limited near metal-poor stars
In a new study, astronomers report novel evidence regarding the limits of planet formation, finding that after a certain point, planets larger than Earth have difficulty forming near low-metallicity stars.
Using the sun as a baseline, astronomers can measure when a star formed by determining its metallicity, or the level of heavy elements present within it. Metal-rich stars or nebulas form AI-Assisted Discovery Reveals How Microbial Proteins Adapt to Extreme Pressures
Using a Google AI tool, scientists have revealed how proteins in a heat-loving microbe respond to intense pressure, similar to conditions found in the planet's deepest ocean trenches. This research offers key insights into how life's building blocks may have evolved under early Earth conditions and opens new doors for future studies.
The research, now published in 'PRX Life', highlights th 
