Adelaide, Australia (SPX) Apr 06, 2023
SmartSat Cooperative Research Centre (CRC), Australia's largest space research centre, is committing over AU$1 million to support the development of new space technology that will be tested in space as payloads on the Waratah Seed WS-1 (Waratah Seed) spacecraft, Australia's first space qualification-focused ride-share mission, due to take its maiden flight later in 2023. The SmartSat NSW Node an

Rochester NY (SPX) Apr 06, 2023
Orolia, a Safran Electronics and Defense company, has partnered with Xona Space Systems to develop support for Xona's Low-Earth-Orbit (LEO) constellation and navigation signals in its Skydel-powered simulation and testing products. Xona is developing PULSAR - a high-performance positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) service enabled by a commercial constellation of dedicated LEO satellites.

Paris (ESA) Apr 06, 2023
Preparing the Juice mission to Jupiter has involved testing for all kinds of contingencies, down to the smallest of scales. This microscopic view shows surface damage to a tiny silver interconnector after being exposed to erosive atomic oxygen known to be found surrounding Jupiter's moon Ganymede. Due to launch on 13 April to begin an eight-year journey to the largest planet in the Solar S

Space Coast FL (SPX) Apr 07, 2023
SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40), Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS), Florida, on Friday, April 7th, at 12:30 a.m. EDT, with the Intelsat 40e (IS-40e), a high-throughput geostationary communications satellite built by Maxar Technologies and operated by Intelsat, while hosting NASA's TEMPO spacecraft. Intelsat 40e will be positioned at 91 de

Jiuquan, China (XNA) Apr 07, 2023
The Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, which is currently China's only site for launching manned spacecraft into orbit, is looking to tap into the burgeoning commercial market by offering more services and stronger capabilities. Located in northwest China's Gobi Desert, the Jiuquan launch center has carried out numerous space missions since its establishment in 1958. It frequented media Chin

Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Apr 07, 2023
Of the many different kinds of stars, asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars, usually slightly larger and older than our own sun, are known producers of interstellar dust. Dusty AGBs are particularly prominent producers of dust, and the light they shine happens to vary widely. For the first time, a long-period survey has found the variable intensity of dusty AGBs coincides with variations in the am

Washington DC (SPX) Apr 07, 2023
On Feb. 22, 1971, a sounding rocket lifted off from Wallops Island, Virginia, with specialized sensors aimed at the Crab Nebula, a bright cosmic object 6,500 light-years away. In those days, before recovering physical tapes from the experiment, scientists first received scientific data on a strip chart recorder, a device that printed signals on paper. Astronomer Martin Weisskopf and his colleagu

Lisbon, Portugal (SPX) Apr 07, 2023
With data from Kepler (NASA), Gaia (ESA) and SOHO (NASA/ESA) satellites, a team1, led by Instituto de Astrofisica e Ciencias do Espaco (IA2) researcher Angela Santos, seems to have put an end to the idea that the Sun might not be a regular "sun-like" star. The results were published in Astronomy and Astrophysics3. Although it might seem odd to try to find out if the Sun is a sun-like star,

Baltimore MD (SPX) Apr 07, 2023
The explosion of a star is a dramatic event, but the remains that the star leaves behind can be even more dramatic. A new mid-infrared image from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope provides one stunning example. It shows the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A), created by a stellar explosion 340 years ago from Earth's perspective. The image displays vivid colors and intricate structures beggin

New Haven CT (SPX) Apr 07, 2023
There's an invisible monster on the loose, barreling through intergalactic space so fast that if it were in our solar system, it could travel from Earth to the Moon in 14 minutes. This supermassive black hole, weighing as much as 20 million Suns, has left behind a never-before-seen 200,000-light-year-long "contrail" of newborn stars, twice the diameter of our Milky Way galaxy. It's likely the re