The satellite, named Lunar Pathfinder, will be vital for the planned return missions to the Moon. Built by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) and supported by 11.6 million pounds in UK Space Agency funding via the European Space Agency (ESA),…
When it comes time for NASA’s Psyche spacecraft to power itself through deep space, it’ll be more brain than brawn that does the work. Once the stuff of science fiction, the efficient and quiet power of electric propulsion will provide…
For a team of scientists and technicians from Europe and the US, the fact of ‘going back to the office’ this September has meant heading off to the Cabo Verde islands in the Atlantic – not to extend their summer…
ESA’s Rosalind Franklin twin rover on Earth has drilled down and extracted samples 1.7 metres into the ground – much deeper than any other martian rover has ever attempted. The successful collection of soil from a hard stone and its…
Even the most highly trained and experienced person sometimes needs a hand. For astronauts aboard the International Space Station, that helping hand comes from other crew members, experts on the ground, and increasingly, in the form of augmented reality (AR)…
NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter provided a 3D view of a rock-covered mound during its 13th flight on Sept. 4. The plan for this reconnaissance mission into the “South Seitah” region of Mars’ Jezero Crater was to capture images of this…
In 2023, NASA’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) will land near the western edge of the Nobile Crater at the Moon’s South Pole to map and explore the region’s surface and subsurface for water and other resources. Part of…
In the bay of Vlora on central Albania’s coast, crystal clear waters sparkle in the sun but under the surface, it is a desert. The large brown algae forests — a hot spot of biodiversity — are steadily shrinking, scientists…
©NASA Astronaut Shane Kimbrough removes robotics workstation components. (Sept. 9, 2021) ©NASA Astronaut Shane Kimbrough removes robotics workstation components. (Sept. 9, 2021) NASA’s Space to Ground is your weekly update on what’s happening aboard the International Space Station. Got a…
NASA’s ice-hunting VIPER lunar rover, scheduled to arrive on the moon in 2023, would land near the Nobile Crater on the lunar South Pole, the space agency announced Monday. The crater offers a relatively safe area to hunt for water…
The Johnson Space Center scientist was tasked with helping guide the way for mission’s first cored Mars rock sample. The evening of Aug. 1 felt a lot like a birthday to NASA planetary scientist Justin Simon. On that night, Simon…
The Russian government has allocated more than 4.4 billion rubles ($60.6 million) to space company Glavkosmos, a subsidiary of the Roscosmos state corporation, for the production of a rocket and spaceship for tourist flights by 2024. “To allocate in 2021…
A satellite image shows smoke from the 2019-20 Australian wildfires covering parts of the Southern Ocean. Credit: Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communication Technology. CREDIT Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communication Technology A satellite image shows smoke from…
©NASA Astronaut Shane Kimbrough wears an augmented reality headset. (Sept. 7, 2021) ©NASA Astronaut Shane Kimbrough wears an augmented reality headset. (Sept. 7, 2021) A 3D virtual reality camera that filmed Sunday’s spacewalk has been returned to the inside of…
If you are spacewalking and you know it, raise your hand. ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet (left) and JAXA astronaut Aki Hoshide (right) performed a spacewalk on Sunday 12 September to prepare another section of the International Space Station for its…
Dynetics, a wholly owned subsidiary of Leidos, has been selected to help NASA enable a steady pace of crewed trips to the Moon’s surface as part of the Artemis program’s Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP-2) Appendix N. As…
Houston, we have a problem! Love and sex need to happen in space if we hope to travel long distances and become an interplanetary species, but space organizations are not ready. National agencies and private space companies – such as…
Scientists found evidence that a region of northern Mars called Arabia Terra experienced thousands of “super eruptions,” the biggest volcanic eruptions known, over a 500-million-year period. Some volcanoes can produce eruptions so powerful they release oceans of dust and toxic…
ESA confirmed a contract signature yesterday with Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) to be the main customer for their Lunar Pathfinder satellite launching in 2024 that will provide communications services around the Moon. A whole suite of lunar exploration missions…
NASA missions make it seem like the future is now – rovers exploring Mars with cutting-edge gadgets, a spacecraft venturing home with an asteroid sample, and a complex space telescope peering at the early universe. So, what’s the next big…
Four SpaceX tourists returned to Earth safely on Saturday after spending three days in space, successfully concluding the first orbital mission in history with no professional astronauts on board. The SpaceX Dragon capsule, whose heat shield allowed it to withstand…
South Korea’s Institute for Defense Analyses managed to carry out successful firing tests of a solid-propellant engine for a new space launch vehicle already on 29 July, paving way for commercial launches of this type of rockets to start as…
ABL Space Systems announced that is has been selected as the launch provider for the NASA Cryogenic Demonstration Mission. Developed under a NASA Tipping Point contract awarded in 2020, the Cryogenic Demonstration Mission will launch in 2023 and demonstrate in-space…
©NASA Astronaut Akihiko Hoshide checks out a pair of Astrobee robotic free-flyers inside the Kibo laboratory module. ©NASA Astronaut Akihiko Hoshide checks out a pair of Astrobee robotic free-flyers inside the Kibo laboratory module. A variety of robotics work took…
Men’s sleep may be more powerfully influenced by the lunar cycle than women’s, according to a new study from Uppsala University, now published in the journal Science of the Total Environment. Previous studies have produced somewhat conflicting results on the…
Russian actress Yulia Peresild said Thursday it was “too late” for fear ahead of her launch into space, as Moscow races against Hollywood to film the first movie in orbit. Russia’s space agency Roscosmos is dispatching the 36-year-old screen star…
NASA has selected Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, California, to provide launch services for the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-U (GOES-U) mission. GOES-U will provide advanced imagery and atmospheric measurements of Earth’s weather, oceans, and environment, as well as real-time…
Thousands of seabirds that wash up on Atlantic coasts every year could have been starved to death by cyclones that whip up “washing machine” waves, a new study says, with experts warning the phenomenon could worsen with climate change. Puffins,…
Scientists have reported new clues to solving a cosmic conundrum: How the quark-gluon plasma – nature’s perfect fluid – evolved into matter. A few millionths of a second after the Big Bang, the early universe took on a strange new…
The bush fires that torched Australia in 2019 and 2020 fueled massive algal blooms a few thousand miles away in the Southern Ocean, according to a new study. Between November 2019 and January 2020, wildfires across Australia burned millions of…
Mushballs – giant, slushy hailstones made from a mixture of ammonia and water – may be responsible for an atmospheric anomaly at Neptune and Uranus that has been puzzling scientists. A study presented by Tristan Guillot at the Europlanet Science…
Synspective Inc., a SAR satellite data and analytic solution provider, announced a new Launch Agreement with a small satellite launch services provider, Exolaunch, to launch Synspective’s third demonstration SAR satellite “StriX-1” on a Soyuz-2 launch vehicle in mid-2022. The companies…
Three Chinese astronauts have completed the country’s longest crewed mission and started their journey home on Thursday after 90 days at the Tiangong space station conducting spacewalks and scientific experiments. “The Shenzhou-12 manned spacecraft has successfully separated from the space…
Analysis of unique “fingerprints” in light emitted from material surrounding young stars has revealed “significant reservoirs” of large organic molecules necessary to form the basis of life. Dr John Ilee, Research Fellow at the University of Leeds who led the…
An enhanced version of BeiDou short message service was showcased at the First International Summit on BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) Applications held in Changsha, central China’s Hunan Province, Thursday. The new technology enables two-way communication on mobile phones in…
Physicists at the University of Sussex have discovered that black holes exert a pressure on their environment, in a scientific first. In 1974 Stephen Hawking made the seminal discovery that black holes emit thermal radiation. Previous to that, black holes…