Copernical Team
Vega-C: watch tomorrow's launch
ESA’s new Vega-C rocket is just one day from its inaugural flight. You can follow live on ESA Web TV. Flight VV21 will lift off as soon as 13 July at 13:13 CEST, pending suitable conditions for launch.
Broadcast begins 12:45 CEST/11:45 BST on ESA Web TV
13:13 CEST/12:13 BST/11:13 UTC/08:13 Kourou – liftoff
Ariane 6 central core transferred to mobile gantry
The Ariane 6 launch pad at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana now hosts the first example of ESA’s new heavy-lift rocket. This Ariane 6 combined tests model will be used to validate the entire launch system during its ground phase in readiness for the inaugural launch of Ariane 6.
AI CubeSat headed to Van Allen Belts on Vega-C
An ESA-financed nanosatellite, due to lift off aboard the inaugural flight of Vega-C this Wednesday, will operate an AI system in the harsh, radiation-wracked environment of the Van Allen Belts. The shoebox-sized Trisat-R – one of six ‘CubeSats’ on the flight, headed up to a rarely-trafficked close to 6000 km altitude orbit – is also carrying radiation-detection payloads from CERN, the European Council for Nuclear Research, Slovenian firm SkyLabs and ESA itself.
Upside-down design expands wide-spectrum super-camera abilities
By turning a traditional lab-based fabrication process upside down, researchers at Duke University have greatly expanded the abilities of light-manipulating metasurfaces while also making them much more robust against the elements.
The combination could allow these quickly maturing devices to be used in a wide range of practical applications, such as cameras that capture images in a broad Virgin Galactic picks Boeing subsidiary to build two motherships
Space travel company Virgin Galactic on Wednesday said it had reached an agreement with Boeing subsidiary Aurora Flight Sciences to build two new air launch carrier aircraft for its spaceships.
These new "motherships" will replace Virgin Galactic's existing carrier plane - the VMS Eve built by Scaled Composites - with the first of the new aircraft due to enter service by 2025. The company Chinese scientists help solve riddle of Moon's largest crater
Chinese scientists have published a study that helps to explain an anomaly in the composition of the Moon's biggest crater - the South Pole-Aitken Basin - identifying the abnormal materials there as originating from the lunar crust.
The study was conducted by a Chinese research team studying planetary sciences at Shandong University, and was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. AFRL spacecraft recurve launches on Virgin Orbit Space Force mission
The Air Force Research Laboratory Space Vehicles Directorate spaceflight experiment Recurve was launched July 2, 2022, from the Mojave Air and Space Port on the Virgin Orbit space system in California. The launch supported the U.S. Space Force's STP-S28A mission and carried six additional payloads for the Department of Defense Space Test Program (STP).
Recurve is the latest in several low- Webb Telescope is now fully ready for science
The months-long process of preparing NASA's James Webb Space Telescope for science is now complete. All of the seventeen ways or 'modes' to operate Webb's scientific instruments have now been checked out, which means that Webb has completed its commissioning activities and is ready to begin full scientific operations.
Each of Webb's four scientific instruments has multiple modes of operati NASA releases next wave of images from James Webb Space Telescope
The James Webb Space Telescope began releasing a new wave of cosmic images on Tuesday, heralding a new era of astronomy.
"Every image is a new discovery," said NASA administrator Bill Nelson. "Each will give humanity a view of the universe that we've never seen before."
On Monday, Webb revealed the clearest image to date of the early universe, going back 13 billion years.
One new ima James Webb Telescope to release more breathtaking cosmic views
After unveiling the clearest view yet of the distant cosmos, the James Webb Space Telescope has more to come.
The next wave of images on Tuesday will reveal details about the atmosphere of a faraway gas planet, a "stellar nursery" where stars form, a "quintet" of galaxies locked in a dance of close encounters, and the cloud of gas around a dying star.
They will be published starting from 10:30 am Eastern Time (1430 GMT), in an event live streamed from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, just outside Washington.
Targets include Carina Nebula, a stellar nursery, famous for its towering pillars that include "Mystic Mountain," a three-light-year-tall cosmic pinnacle captured in an iconic image by Hubble.
Webb has also carried out a spectroscopy—an analysis of light that reveals detailed information—on a gas giant planet called WASP-96 b, which was discovered in 2014.
Nearly 1,150 light-years from Earth, WASP-96 b is about half the mass of Jupiter and zips around its star in just 3.4 days.