Sydney, Australia (SPX) Nov 14, 2024
China launched a new satellite designed to detect ocean salinity on Thursday from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in Shanxi Province, northern China, as reported by the China National Space Administration (CNSA). The satellite was successfully sent into orbit at 6:42 am Beijing Time, carried by a Long March-4B Y53 rocket. This satellite aims to close the gap in China's high-precision g

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Nov 19, 2024
The space tourism industry, once a distant dream reserved for science fiction, is now hurtling toward reality at escape velocity. Companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic have turned cosmic adventures into tangible experiences - albeit ones with hefty price tags. With this monumental shift, the marketing landscape for space tourism is equally transforming, propelled by innovative

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Nov 16, 2024
Satellites positioned high above Earth transmit crucial data to the surface in under a second, appearing swiftly on a computer screen monitored by a U.S. Space Force operator. The operator's swift understanding of this data is vital for rapid decision-making during high-stakes missile defense situations. "Speed is everything. Speed to mission, speed to impact, speed to performance," said J

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Nov 13, 2024
Since its launch on November 1, 2022, the U.S. Space Force's Space Systems Command (SSC), in collaboration with Millennium Space Systems, a Boeing Company, has successfully wrapped up the Tetra-1 mission. Tetra-1 marked the first in a series of small satellites designed to showcase how SSC collaborates with non-traditional vendors to enhance on-orbit capabilities for the Space Force. Part

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Nov 15, 2024
The Atacama Desert in Chile, known as the world's driest location, presents a harsh environment for life due to its extreme aridity. Despite this, research has discovered thriving microbial communities within its sandy soil. Investigating the functionality of microorganisms in such an environment has been challenging because it's hard to distinguish between genetic material from living and decea

Washington (AFP) Nov 18, 2024
The world's richest man, Elon Musk, has been an ever-present sidekick for President-elect Donald Trump since the US election at the start of the month. "I can't get him out of here," Trump joked about Musk at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida last Thursday. "I like having him here as well. He's done a fantastic job, an incredible mind." But can the bromance between the world's wealthiest

Boca Chica, United States (AFP) Nov 19, 2024
SpaceX is poised for its next Starship megarocket test flight on Tuesday, with US President-elect Donald Trump expected to witness the second ever attempt to catch its descending booster stage in the launch tower's "chopstick" arms. It comes just over a month after the company first pulled off the technical tour de force that underscored its position as the world leader in reusable rocketry.

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The double-satellite Proba-3 is the most ambitious member yet of ESA’s Proba family of experimental missions. Two spacecraft will fly together as one, maintaining precise formation down to a single millimetre. One will block out the fiery disc of the Sun for the other, to enable prolonged observations of the Sun’s surrounding atmosphere, or ‘corona’, the source of the solar wind and space weather. Usually, the corona can only be glimpsed for a few minutes during terrestrial total solar eclipses. Proba-3 aims to reproduce such eclipses for up to six hours at a time, in a highly