Copernical Team
Rocket Lab spacecraft built for Varda operating on orbit
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Rocket Lab USA, Inc. (Nasdaq: RKLB) reports its spacecraft for Varda Space Industries ("Varda"), a leading in-space manufacturing and hypersonic re-entry logistics company, is successfully operating on orbit after launching from Vandenberg Space Force Base today on SpaceX's Transporter-8 mission at 14:35 PDT (21:35 UTC).
The spacecraft was developed, manufactured, and tested at Rocket Lab' Exolaunch deploys over 30 smallsats on Spacex's Transporter-8 Rideshare Mission
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On June 12, the Transporter-8 rideshare mission successfully launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The mission featured the integration of 32 customer satellites, facilitated by Exolaunch, with SpaceX's Falcon 9. This launch denotes a significant landmark for Exolaunch, pushing its total to over 300 satellites launched for customers.
The Transporter-8 mission was marked The sun reaches solar maximum in 2032: A new NASA flagship mission could give us a perfect view
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There are always more space missions than there is money to support them. Ultimately, some make the cut, and some do not. Various factors go into that decision, though those factors can change over the years and decades that some of these missions are designed to take.
But the more ideas, the better, and now a new idea has sprung up from a group of scientists at SWRI, NASA, and the University of Minnesota, among others. It involves four different probes sent to various points in the solar system to observe the sun as it has never been seen before—and just in time to see its most spectacular display in 2032.
The mission, called COMPLETE (which does not appear to be an acronym), would send satellites to several different Lagrange points in the Earth-sun system.
Falcon 9 deploys 53 Starlink satellites on SpaceX's 40th launch of the year
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A Falcon 9 rocket topped with 53 Starlink spacecraft lifted off in a southeast trajectory from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40), Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS), Florida, at 3:10 a.m. EDT (0710 UTC) Monday.
The mission is called the Starlink Group 5-11 mission, 65 minutes after liftoff, with 53 older-generation Starlink V1.5 satellites deployed in an orbit inclined 43 degrees to Nicolas Bobrinsky on excellence | ESA Masterclass
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The level of practical expertise, technical and operational expertise required to operate in such a fast-paced, rapidly changing environment such as space needs to be permanently developed and improved to maintain the technical excellence at the right level. But the constant improvement of the technical and operational knowledge is an exciting journey. Nicolas has experienced this first-hand since he joined the European Space Agency Operation Centre as Ground Station Engineer. As a young engineer at ESA, you can gain extremely valuable expertise through launch campaigns, test and validation campaigns, time at the console in the operation control room together with your team, witnessing and learning from the whole
Artificial photosynthesis for real oxygen
Has Gaia found missing link in black hole evolution?
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When ESA’s Gaia spacecraft scanned the Scorpius constellation and its ancient globular star cluster Messier 4, it captured something strange: a huge dark blob at the cluster’s centre, 800 times more massive than our Sun.
It is normal for globular clusters to have dark centres made up of many dead stars. But the mass at the centre of Messier 4 looks different – despite being especially large, it seems to be squeezed into a surprisingly small volume of space.
“Using the latest Gaia and Hubble data, it was not possible to distinguish between a dark population of stellar remnants and a
Relay system speeds vital data flow with 75 000 links
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Life-saving data that enables European governments to respond rapidly to crises is flowing swiftly from space to Earth, thanks to the most sophisticated space-based laser communication network ever built.
OneWeb and Eutelsat demonstrate global connectivity solution to NATO
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Representatives at the NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCIA) took part in a successful demonstration of combined Geo-stationary (GEO) and low Earth orbit (LEO) multi-orbit capability from satellite companies and strategic partners, OneWeb and Eutelsat last month.
The hands-on live demonstration enabled the NATO attendees to get a real feel for the steps that, together, both com China launches rocket with record payload
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China launched a ZK 1A carrier rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China, transporting 26 satellites into space and setting a new record for the most spacecraft launched by a single Chinese rocket.
The 30-meter, solid-propellant rocket blasted off at 12:10 pm and soon placed the satellites into preset orbits, including the Shiyan 24A and 24B experimental satelli 
