Tokyo (AFP) Feb 13, 2024
Japan's space agency on Tuesday postponed the launch of its next-generation rocket planned for this week due to expected bad weather, after two previous attempts ended in failure. The H3 rocket had been scheduled to lift off on Thursday from the southern island of Tanegashima. Billed as a flexible and cost-effective new flagship, it was to carry two small satellites during the mission, i

Washington (AFP) Feb 13, 2024
A private Houston-based company is set this week to lead a mission to the Moon which, if successful, will mark America's first lunar landing since the end of the Apollo era five decades ago. Reputation will be on the line when Intuitive Machines' Nova-C spaceship will launch atop a SpaceX rocket on Wednesday, following recent completed touchdowns by China, India and Japan. So why entrus

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See how the Sun changed between February 2021 and October 2023. As the Sun approaches the maximum in its magnetic activity cycle, we see more brilliant explosions, dark sunspots, loops of plasma, and swirls of super-hot gas.

The Sun goes through a cycle of activity that lasts around 11 years. It is caused by the ‘solar dynamo’, the process that generates the Sun’s magnetic field. At the beginning of this cycle (the solar minimum) there is relatively little activity and few sunspots. Activity steadily increases until it peaks (the solar maximum) and then decreases again to a minimum.

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The Po Valley, nestled in northern Italy, is renowned for its picturesque landscapes and rich agricultural history. However, the region is also grappling with a persistent environmental challenge: air pollution. The unique geographical and meteorological conditions of the Po Valley contribute to fluctuations in air quality – impacting the health of its residents.

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ESA project astronaut Marcus Wandt shared this video with sequences of his microgravity training on the International Space Station on social media with the caption:

“The training prepared me for most of my tasks during the #Muninn mission on the Space Station. But one thing that is difficult to train for is the feeling of microgravity, or how much I have to push myself to get my body translating into the velocity I want, or how I turn into a corner in a good way, or how I reposition myself. That is difficult to train, so I had to practice

Pasadena CA (JPL) Feb 12, 2024
An experimental antenna has received both radio frequency and near-infrared laser signals from NASA's Psyche spacecraft as it travels through deep space. This shows it's possible for the giant dish antennas of NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN), which communicate with spacecraft via radio waves, to be retrofitted for optical, or laser, communications. By packing more data into transmissions,

Huntsville AL (SPX) Feb 12, 2024
RWhen the second CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) delivery is launched to the Moon in mid-February, its NASA payloads will include an experiment that could change how human explorers, rovers, and spacecraft independently track their precise location on the Moon and in cis-lunar space. Demonstrating autonomous navigation, the Lunar Node-1 experiment, or LN-1, is a radio beacon desig

Boston MA (SPX) Feb 12, 2024
In the coming decades, NASA plans to send human crews back to the Moon, build a space station in lunar orbit, establish a permanent base on the lunar surface and - hopefully - send astronauts to Mars. What could possibly go wrong? No seriously, what could go wrong and how would we fix it? That is the question a group of researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering

Stuttgart, Germany (SPX) Feb 12, 2024
Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR) is a very precise, laser-based method for determining the distance between a satellite and Earth with an accuracy of a few millimetres. SLR is primarily used in geodesy. This is because the precise measurement of satellite orbits helps to determine changes in Earth's structure and rotation. The SLR method also makes important contributions in the field of satellite