Software making space missions smarter
Tuesday, 08 June 2021 12:13
To help venture further into space, or to gather ever more data, space missions keep on getting smarter. The latest Earth-observing satellites decide which images need sending to users, while planetary probes or rovers located beyond the limits of real-time oversight are able to set and follow their own course.
Relativity raises $650 million round, announces Terran R rocket
Tuesday, 08 June 2021 12:00
WASHINGTON — Relativity Space announced June 8 it has raised $650 million in a new funding round to support development of a fully reusable launch vehicle far larger than its original Terran 1 rocket.
Relativity said Fidelity led its Series E round with participation from new investors BlackRock, Centricus, Coatue and Soroban Capital.
New X-ray map reveals growing supermassive black holes in next-gen survey fields
Tuesday, 08 June 2021 11:47
Scientists identify a rare magnetic propeller in a binary star system
Tuesday, 08 June 2021 11:47
Researchers at the University of Notre Dame have identified the first eclipsing magnetic propeller in a cataclysmic variable star system, according to research forthcoming in the Astrophysical Journal.
The star system, referred to as J0240, is only the second of its kind on record. It was identified in 2020 as an unusual cataclysmic variable—a binary system consisting of a white dwarf star and a mass-donating red star. Normally, the compact white dwarf star collects the donated gas and grows in mass. In J0240, however, the fast-spinning, magnetic white dwarf rejects the donor's gas and propels it out of the binary system.
"It takes a rapidly spinning dwarf with a strong magnetic field in order to create a propeller," said Peter Garnavich, professor of astrophysics and cosmology physics and chair of the Department of Physics at Notre Dame, and lead author of the study that presented evidence of the propeller system.
Rosetta stone eruption on the sun could help explain solar explosions
Tuesday, 08 June 2021 11:45
In a dramatic, multi-staged eruption, the sun has revealed new clues that could help scientists solve the long-standing mystery of what causes the sun's powerful and unpredictable eruptions. Uncovering this fundamental physics could help scientists better predict the eruptions that cause dangerous space weather conditions at Earth.
This explosion contained components of three different types of solar eruptions that usually occur separately—making it the first time such an event has been reported. Having all three eruption types together in one event provides scientists with something of a solar Rosetta Stone, allowing them to translate what they know about each type of solar eruption to understand other types and uncover an underlying mechanism that could explain all types of solar eruptions.
"This event is a missing link, where we can see all of these aspects of different types of eruptions in one neat little package," said Emily Mason, lead author on the new study and solar scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "It drives home the point that these eruptions are caused by the same mechanism, just at different scales.
Blue Canyon Technologies names new CEO
Tuesday, 08 June 2021 11:00
WASHINGTON — Blue Canyon Technologies has promoted one of its co-founders to chief executive to lead the next phase of growth of the Raytheon-owned smallsat manufacturer.
Blue Canyon announced June 8 that Stephen Steg, who had been chief technical officer of the company since its 2008 founding, will take over as chief executive.
New study calls for ‘national dialogue’ on future environmental satellites
Tuesday, 08 June 2021 08:00
WASHINGTON — The U.S. government is poised to make large investments in environmental monitoring satellites but these efforts are not well coordinated across agencies that acquire these systems and the users of data collected by weather satellites, says a new report by the Aerospace Corp.
China releases new Mars image taken by Tianwen 1 probe
Tuesday, 08 June 2021 06:09
The China National Space Administration (CNSA) Monday released a new image taken by the Tianwen 1 probe, showing the country's first Mars rover and its landing platform on the red planet's surface.
In the image, taken by a high-resolution camera installed on the orbiter of Tianwen 1 at 6 pm on June 2 (Beijing Time), two bright spots are visible in the upper right corner. The larger one is Amazon's Jeff Bezos to go to space on Blue Origin rocket
Tuesday, 08 June 2021 06:09
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos announced plans on Monday to fly into space next month on a rocket built by his company Blue Origin, fulfilling what he said was a lifelong dream.
The 57-year-old billionaire said he and his brother Mark will blast off from Earth on July 20 on the first crewed flight of the company's New Shepard launch vehicle.
Blue Origin is auctioning off the third seat in the NASA's new $23 million space commode system is more than just a toilet
Tuesday, 08 June 2021 06:09
Going to the bathroom at the International Space Station is about to get easier and cleaner with a new toilet system that cost NASA $23 million to develop.
Astronauts are connecting and checking out the toilet, which actually is a high-tech improvement to the space station's water recycling system.
The multimillion-dollar budget for the project includes another unit installed ins China tests new parachute system for rocket boosters
Tuesday, 08 June 2021 06:09
China tested a new rocket-booster parachute system during a recent launch from the southwest of the country, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation said on Monday.
The system was tested on June 3 when the meteorological satellite Fengyun-4B was sent into a geostationary orbit via a Long March-3B carrier rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan province. SpaceX's night-time launch sends SiriusXM satellite into orbit
Tuesday, 08 June 2021 06:09
Elon Musk's SpaceX launched a communications satellite for SiriusXM early Sunday from Florida in the first such mission since one of the broadcast company's spacecraft failed after launch in December.
The satellite, known as SXM-8, was lifted aboard a Falcon 9 rocket at 12:26 a.m. from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The launch, which occurred at the start of Axions could be the fossil of the universe researchers have been waiting for
Tuesday, 08 June 2021 06:09
Finding the hypothetical particle axion could mean finding out for the first time what happened in the Universe a second after the Big Bang, suggests a new study published in Physical Review D on June 7.
How far back into the Universe's past can we look today? In the electromagnetic spectrum, observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background - commonly referred to as the CMB - allow us to se Frozen rotifer reanimated after 24,000 years in the Arctic tundra
Tuesday, 08 June 2021 06:09
Move over water bears, rotifers are pretty tough too.
According to new research, Bdelloid rotifers, a class of microscopic invertebrates, can remain frozen for thousands of years and survive.
Recently, researchers at the Soil Cryology Lab - part of the Institute of Physicochemical and Biological Problems in Soil Science, located in Russia - reanimated a Bdelloid rotifer that ha GMRT measures the atomic hydrogen gas mass in galaxies 9 billion years ago
Tuesday, 08 June 2021 06:09
A team of astronomers from the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA-TIFR) in Pune, and the Raman Research Institute (RRI), in Bangalore, has used the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) to measure the atomic hydrogen gas content of galaxies 9 billion years ago, in the young universe.
This is the earliest epoch in the universe for which there is a measurement of the atomic hydrog