Copernical Team
NASA Invites Media to New OSIRIS-REx, Asteroid Bennu Study Briefing
Image: Crater trio
This image was taken on 22 March 2021 in the Lunae Planum region [16.74°N, 300.9°E] of Mars by the CaSSIS camera on the ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO).
This region is known to be covered by large lava deposits probably from the nearby Tharsis Montes volcanoes. In this image three medium-sized impact craters take center stage, with many smaller impacts pockmarking the scene. Zooming into the larger craters it is possible to see layers in the inner rim that could represent the successive accumulation of lava flows in this area.
TGO's full science mission began in 2018. The spacecraft is not only returning spectacular images, but also providing the best ever inventory of the planet's atmospheric gases, and mapping the planet's surface for water-rich locations. It will also provide data relay services for the second ExoMars mission comprising the Rosalind Franklin rover and Kazachok platform, when it arrives on Mars in 2023.
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Air Force Materiel Command takes on role as servicing major command for Space Force
Air Force Materiel Command is adding on a new role as the designated Servicing Major Command for the U.S. Space Force. Recently the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Space Force took steps to define AFMC's role as the designated Servicing MAJCOM for the U.S. Space Force. These actions included a memorandum of understanding providing a strategic overview of support provided to the USSF by the USAF. A
Tianhe astronauts use free time to watch ping-pong and exercise
Chinese astronauts on board the Tiangong space station have enjoyed watching matches from the Tokyo Olympic Games, according to the China Manned Space Agency. "Technically, we can connect them to live broadcasts, but they've chosen to watch transmitted recordings during their time off, because there are so many tasks for them to complete," the agency said in an article on its WeChat accoun
Long March rocket lifts off with communications satellite
China used a Long March 3B carrier rocket to place a communications satellite in space early on Friday morning. The rocket blasted off at 00:30 am at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwestern China's Sichuan province and then deployed the ChinaSat 2E satellite in its orbit, according to the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp, the nation's leading space contractor.
Army award-winning research to transform Soldier-robot communication
Army researchers developed ground-breaking technology that will enhance how Soldiers and robots communicate and carry out tasks in tactical environments. This research sets out to develop a natural language understanding, or NLU, pipeline for robots that would be easily ported over to any computational system or agent and incrementally tames the variation that we see in natural language, s
Gearing up for third Sentinel-2 satellite
With the first Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite in orbit since 2015 and the second since 2017, engineers are busy preparing the mission’s follow-on pair to eventually pick up the baton to supply images for a myriad of applications from food security to monitoring the decline of Earth’s ice. Slated for launch at the beginning of 2024, Sentinel-2C has just started a punishing five-month testing programme to ensure that it is fit for its life in space.
New ESO observations show rocky exoplanet has just half the mass of Venus
A team of astronomers have used the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT) in Chile to shed new light on planets around a nearby star, L 98-59, that resemble those in the inner Solar System. Amongst the findings are a planet with half the mass of Venus - the lightest exoplanet ever to be measured using the radial velocity technique - an ocean world, and a possible plane
Scientists Have New Data on the Nearest Planet to the Sun
An international team of planetary scientists from Russia, Finland, and the United States has analyzed for the first time the factors that determine the number of boulders on the surface of the nearest planet to the Sun, Mercury. Boulders are fragments of rock that form as a result of meteorite impacts on the planet's surface and are located in areas of fresh impact craters hundreds of meters in