Copernical Team
Mission Alpha launch replay
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Video:
02:33:30
The full replay of the ESA Web TV coverage of the liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft with ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet, NASA astronauts Megan McArthur and Shane Kimbrough, and Japanese astronaut Aki Hoshide. The Crew-2 will spend around 24 hours travelling to the International Space Station. The rocket lifted off at 11:49 on 23 April 2021 from Launchpad 39A in Cape Canaveral at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA.
Thomas is the first ESA astronaut to fly in space in a vehicle other than the Russian Soyuz or the US Space Shuttle,
Alpha: Second Space Station mission for ESA’s Thomas Pesquet begins
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Today at 11:08 (CEST) the Crew Dragon spacecraft with ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet, NASA astronauts Megan McArthur and Shane Kimbrough, and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Akihiko Hoshide docked with the International Space Station’s Node-2 Harmony module, marking the start of ESA’s six-month mission Alpha.
Asteroid that hit Botswana in 2018 likely came from Vesta
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An international team of researchers searched for pieces of a small asteroid tracked in space and then observed to impact Botswana on June 2, 2018. Guided by SETI Institute meteor astronomer Peter Jenniskens, they found 23 meteorites deep inside the Central Kalahari Game Reserve and now have published their findings online in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science.
"Combining the observations of the small asteroid in space with information gleaned from the meteorites shows it likely came from Vesta, second largest asteroid in our solar system and target of NASA's DAWN mission," said Jenniskens.
Mars-directed coronal mass ejection erupts from the sun
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NASA's STEREO-A and ESA/NASA's SOHO spacecraft detected a coronal mass ejection, or CME, leaving the sun on April 17 at 12:36 p.m. EDT. This CME did not impact Earth but did move toward Mars, passing the planet in the late evening and early morning hours of April 21 and 22.
The CME reached Mars two days after NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter became the first aircraft in history to make a powered, controlled flight on another planet. NASA tracks such solar eruptions because solar eruptions can trigger particle and radiation events that pose a risk to astronauts and sensitive spacecraft electronics.
SpaceX launches 3rd crew with recycled rocket and capsule
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Two pilots, rocket scientist, oceanographer flying SpaceX
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SpaceX's third crew has an attack helicopter pilot, a former Air France pilot, a Japanese rocket scientist and an oceanographer.
How do you test a helicopter bound for Mars?
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The Ingenuity helicopter may be the first vehicle ever to fly on Mars, but Mars was not the first place it has ever flown. Before packaging it up and blasting it to the Red Planet, engineers at JPL gave the helicopter a trial run in a special wind tunnel designed with help from researchers at Caltech.
To simulate flying on a planet where the atmosphere is 100 times thinner than Earth's, a custom wind tunnel was built inside of an 85-foot-tall, 25-foot-diameter vacuum chamber at JPL, which Caltech manages for NASA. Pressure in the chamber was pumped down to approximate the Martian atmosphere, while an array of 441 pairs of individually controllable fans blew on the helicopter to simulate forward flight in the enclosed space.
The fan array was designed and built by JPL engineers with input from Caltech's Chris Dougherty and Marcel Veismann, who are currently Ph.D. students working with Mory Gharib, Hans W. Liepmann Professor of Aeronautics and Bioinspired Engineering and Booth-Kresa Leadership Chair of Caltech's Center for Autonomous Systems and Technologies (CAST). Dougherty and Veismann had previously overseen design and assemblage of a similar array of 1,296 pairs of fans for the Real Weather Wind Tunnel at CAST, which opened in 2017.
This supermoon has a twist – expect flooding, but a lunar cycle is masking effects of sea level rise
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A "super full moon" is coming on April 27, 2021, and coastal cities like Miami know that means one thing: a heightened risk of tidal flooding.
Exceptionally high tides are common when the moon is closest to the Earth, known as perigee, and when it's either full or new.
Hubble captures giant star on the edge of destruction
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The expanding shell of gas and dust that surrounds the star is about five light-years wide, which equals the distance from here to the nearest star beyond the Sun, Proxima Centauri.
The huge structure was created from one or more giant eruptions about 10,000 years ago. The star's outer layers were blown into space—like a boiling teapot popping off its lid.
Feeling confinement in the gut: Microbiome alterations common in astronauts
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Crew members who took part in the Mars500 experiment showed significant changes in their gut microbiota from their 520 days in confinement, according to a new study by scientists at Université de Montreal and McGill University.
The study, published today in the Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal and funded by the Canadian Space Agency, analyzed data from fecal samples of six crew members from Russia, Europe and China.
The crew lived in a completely sealed habitat in Moscow from June 2010 to November 2011 to simulate a manned mission to Mars, which international space agencies hope to make in the 2030s. Their confinement was the longest ever conducted with humans under controlled conditions.
The goal: to test the impact of living cut off from the world on the physiological and psychological health. In the end, all six crew members emerged with major alterations in their body mass, muscle strength and other indicators, previous studies have shown.
The discovery of microbiome alterations represents a missing link between these symptoms and deepens scientists' understanding of how well astronauts will be able to work in and recover from long-duration spaceflight, as well as how humans generally interact with their habitats.