London, UK (SPX) Jul 12, 2021
A research team co-led by UCL (University College London) has solved a decades-old mystery as to how Jupiter produces a spectacular burst of X-rays every few minutes. The X-rays are part of Jupiter's aurora - bursts of visible and invisible light that occur when charged particles interact with the planet's atmosphere. A similar phenomenon occurs on Earth, creating the northern lights, but

Washington DC (SPX) Jul 12, 2021
NASA and Northrop Grumman of Dulles, Virginia, have finalized a contract to develop the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) for Gateway, which will be a critical way station and outpost in orbit around the Moon as part of NASA's Artemis program. NASA and its commercial and international partners are building Gateway to support science investigations and enable surface landings at the Moon, w

Washington DC (SPX) Jul 12, 2021
Scientists know that the Earth was bombarded by huge impactors in distant time, but a new analysis suggest that the number of these impacts may have been x10 higher than previously thought. This translates into a barrage of collisions, similar in scale to that of the asteroid strike which wiped out the dinosaurs, on average every 15 million years between 2.5 and 3.5 billion years ago. Some

Pasadena CA (JPL) Jul 12, 2021
Today, Mars is a planet of extremes - it's bitterly cold, has high radiation, and is bone-dry. But billions of years ago, Mars was home to lake systems that could have sustained microbial life. As the planet's climate changed, one such lake - in Mars' Gale Crater - slowly dried out. Scientists have new evidence that super salty water, or brines, seeped deep through the cracks, between grains of

Pasadena CA (JPL) Jul 12, 2021
It has been a week of heightened apprehension on the Mars Helicopter team as we prepared a major flight challenge for Ingenuity. We uplinked instructions for the flight, which occurred Monday, July 5 at 2:03 am PT, and waited nervously for results to arrive from Mars later that morning. The mood in the ground control room was jubilant when we learned that Ingenuity was alive and well after compl

Kennedy Space Center FL (SPX) Jul 12, 2021
In 1962 when America was going to the Moon, NASA established Kennedy Space Center in Florida as its Launch Operations Center. This month, the modernized multi-user spaceport marks its 59th anniversary while working to send Americans back to the Moon, helping grow the commercial space industry, and performing research that benefits humanity. The launch of NASA's Artemis I mission - slated t

London, UK (SPX) Jul 12, 2021
The 3.9 million pound grant from the UK Space Agency will support the development of Reaction Engines' ground-breaking SABRE technology, enabling low-carbon air-breathing space access propulsion technology to be applied more widely in the space sector and beyond. Science Minister Amanda Solloway and Transport Minister Rachel Maclean visited Reaction Engines at its site in Culham, Oxfordshi

Washington DC (UPI) Jul 9, 2021
British billionaire Richard Branson on Sunday plans to become the first owner of a private space company to fly into space. The flight of Branson's Virgin Galactic VSS Unity spaceship is scheduled to lift off sometime after 9 a.m. EDT from New Mexico's private Spaceport America, about 170 miles south of Albuquerque. The company's gleaming white plane, VMS Eve, will carry the spac

Spaceport America, United States (AFP) July 11, 2021
He's always dreamed of it, and in 2004 founded his own company to make it happen. On Sunday, billionaire Richard Branson will take off from a base in New Mexico aboard a Virgin Galactic vessel bound for the edge of space. The Briton is hoping to finally get the nascent space tourism industry off the ground - but also go one up on Jeff Bezos by winning the race to be the first person to