Copernical Team
Scientists don spacesuits to explore Hawaiian lava tubes as if they were on Mars
Imagine trying to pick up a pebble or scrape microbes off a cave wall in a bulky spacesuit with puffy gloves on, under a time constraint because you don't want to run out of oxygen. That's what the analog astronauts do daily at the HI-SEAS moonbase habitat in Hawaii as they prepare for future missions to the moon and Mars, says Michaela Musilova of the International MoonBase Alliance (IMA) and director of HI-SEAS, the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation.
Musilova will present the latest on her team's research on Hawaiian lava tubes, and the challenges of trying to do research in spacesuits, this week at the European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly 2021.
HI-SEAS is an analog lunar and Martian habitat and research station located high on the volcano Mauna Loa, on Hawaii's Big Island.
Setting sail for sustainable space
Space is getting crowded. Old satellites, rocket bodies and fragments of both are leaving little space for new satellites to reside in that is free from debris.
The risk of collision with debris and even functioning satellites is increasing, especially in low-Earth orbit, putting many of Earth’s climate, ocean and land monitoring missions in harm’s way.
ESA is working alongside private business to clean up space by developing new missions and technologies that will remove debris from orbit. No space agency or business could solve the debris problem alone, but if it becomes
ESA Explores a fictional asteroid impact
Once every two years, asteroid experts around the globe meet up and pretend an asteroid impact is imminent. Why? To prepare for the likely – but plausible – scenario in which this comes true.
China to launch Heavenly Harmony space station core module
Spotting cows from space
Cows don't seem to have a whole lot going on most of the time. They're raised to spend their days grazing in the field, raised for the purpose of providing milk or meat, or producing more cows. So when students in UC Santa Barbara ecologist Doug McCauley's lab found themselves staring intently at satellite image upon image of bovine herds at Point Reyes National Seashore, it was funny, in a "Far Fooling fusion fuel: How to discipline unruly plasma
The process designed to harvest on Earth the fusion energy that powers the sun and stars can sometimes be tricked. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics laboratory have derived and demonstrated a bit of slight-of-hand called "quasi-symmetry" that could accelerate the development of fusion energy as a safe, clean and virtually limitless source of power for Responsible Space Behavior for the New Space Era
Humans have explored and exploited near-earth space for more than six decades. More recently, the past two decades have seen the start of a New Space Era, characterized by more spacefaring nations and companies and a growing risk of collisions and conflict.
Yet the basic treaties and mechanisms that were crafted 50 years ago to govern space activities have only marginally changed.
Th US, Israel expand cooperation to the space domain
The U.S. Space Force hosted its first Space Engagement Talks (SET) with the Israeli Air Force during separate virtual sessions April 19-20.
The talks brought together two nations with a shared interest in ensuring access to and peaceful use of outer space.
"Dating back to 1948, America was the first country in the world to recognize modern Israel as a nation," said Lt. Gen. William L Forest measuring satellite passes tests with flying colours
With challenges imposed by the Covid pandemic, engineers building and testing ESA’s Biomass satellite have had to come up with some clever working methods to keep on track whilst adhering to safety rules. The result is that the satellite structure is not only complete, but has also undergone a series of demanding tests to ensure it will withstand the rigours of liftoff – all bringing the launch of this extraordinary forest carbon mapping mission one step closer.
Physicists net neutron star gold from measurement of lead
Nuclear physicists have made a new, highly accurate measurement of the thickness of the neutron "skin" that encompasses the lead nucleus in experiments conducted at the U.S. Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility and just published in Physical Review Letters. The result, which revealed a neutron skin thickness of .28 millionths of a nanometer, has important implica