Washington (AFP) Jan 9, 2024
A private US lunar lander mission is doomed to fail, and NASA pushes back plans to return astronauts to the Moon. The twin developments Tuesday represent blows to America's ambitions to stimulate a commercial space economy, develop a lasting presence on Earth's nearest neighbor, and use it as a jump off point for Mars. China meanwhile is looming in the rear view mirror, targeting 2030 f

Washington (AFP) Jan 9, 2024
An historic commercial US mission to the Moon will fail after suffering a critical loss of fuel, organizers admitted Tuesday, ending for the time being America's hopes of placing its first spacecraft on the lunar surface since the Apollo era. Fixed to the top of United Launch Alliance's new Vulcan rocket, Astrobotic's Peregrine Lunar Lander blasted off Monday from Florida's Cape Canaveral Sp

Glasgow, Scotland (SPX) Jan 10, 2024
New developments on a nearly century-old concept for a 'self-eating' rocket engine capable of flight beyond the Earth's atmosphere could help the UK take a bigger bite of the space industry. University of Glasgow engineers have built and fired the first unsupported 'autophage' rocket engine which consumes parts of its own body for fuel. The design of the autophage engine - the name c

Washington DC (UPI) Jan 9, 2024
NASA announced Tuesday it will delay its Artemis launches to "work through challenges" and "ensure crew safety," as the space agency targets 2026 to return astronauts to the moon. NASA revealed it will now shoot for September 2026, instead of December 2025, to land the first astronauts near the moon's south pole with Artemis III. While NASA was planning to launch Artemis II later this y

Join ESA's start-of-the-year press briefing with Director General Josef Aschbacher on 11 January from 10:00 CET.

Image: Micro-world within atomic clock

Heidelberg, Germany (SPX) Jan 09, 2024
A research team, including astronomers of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA), has detected a three-ringed structure in the nursery of planets in the inner planet-forming disk of a young star. This configuration suggests two Jupiter-mass planets are forming in the gaps between the rings. The detailed analysis is consistent with abundant solid iron grains complementing the dust composit

Paris, France (SPX) Jan 09, 2024
As the global space industry undergoes substantial shifts marked by evolving market dynamics, technological advancements, and geopolitical changes, a new comprehensive white paper from Euroconsult, a leader in space sector strategy consulting and market intelligence, sheds light on an emerging powerhouse: the Middle East's space ecosystem. Titled "Beyond the Stars: The Middle East's Space Ecosys

Boston MA (SPX) Jan 08, 2024
Mass spectrometers, devices that identify chemical substances, are widely used in applications like crime scene analysis, toxicology testing, and geological surveying. But these machines are bulky, expensive, and easy to damage, which limits where they can be effectively deployed. Using additive manufacturing, MIT researchers produced a mass filter, which is the core component of a mass sp

Liege, Belgium (SPX) Jan 08, 2024
Researchers at the University of Liege (ULiege) have identified microstructures in fossil cells that are 1.75 billion years old. These structures, called thylakoid membranes, are the oldest ever discovered. They push back the fossil record of thylakoids by 1.2 billion years and provide new information on the evolution of cyanobacteria which played a crucial role in the accumulation of oxygen on