Register for ESA’s Living Planet Symposium in Bonn
Friday, 11 March 2022 07:10
The time has come to register to attend the European Space Agency’s Living Planet Symposium – one of the largest Earth observation conferences in the world. Taking place on 23–27 May 2022 in Bonn, Germany, and jointly organised with the German Aerospace Center, this prestigious event allows all attendees to hear first-hand about the latest scientific findings on our planet. Attendees will also hear how observing Earth from space supports environmental research and action to combat the climate crisis, learn about novel Earth observing technologies and, importantly, learn about the new opportunities emerging in the rapidly changing sector
Acme plans 250-satellite weather data constellation
Friday, 11 March 2022 03:45
Acme AtronOmatic, vendor of the MyRadar weather app, won FCC approval to launch satellites to demonstrate technology for a constellation that ultimately could include 250 satellites or more.
The post Acme plans 250-satellite weather data constellation appeared first on SpaceNews.
Slingshot Aerospace raises $25M in Series A-1 Funding Round
Friday, 11 March 2022 01:16
AST SpaceMobile announces launch deal with SpaceX
Friday, 11 March 2022 01:16
Satellogic to launch five satellites on SpaceX Transporter-4 Mission
Friday, 11 March 2022 01:16
Sidus Space completes LizzieSat Preliminary Design Review
Friday, 11 March 2022 01:16
Esri releases updated land-cover map with new sets of global data
Friday, 11 March 2022 01:16
Sol 3411: Bonanza
Friday, 11 March 2022 01:16
The start of the birth of planets in a binary star system observed
Friday, 11 March 2022 01:16
Cosmic particle accelerator at its limit
Friday, 11 March 2022 01:16
Astrolab unveils Artemis lunar rover design
Thursday, 10 March 2022 22:36
A California startup has developed and tested a prototype of a lunar rover that it plans to offer to NASA for use on future Artemis missions.
The post Astrolab unveils Artemis lunar rover design appeared first on SpaceNews.
Soyuz embargo strands satellites with limited launch options
Thursday, 10 March 2022 20:36
More than a dozen former Soyuz satellite missions need new rides after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, raising questions over how fast the launch market can absorb the loss of the workhorse rocket.
The post Soyuz embargo strands satellites with limited launch options appeared first on SpaceNews.
Exploring the Rubin Observatory's giant data acquisition system
Thursday, 10 March 2022 20:02
When the Vera C. Rubin Observatory starts taking pictures of the night sky in a few years, its centerpiece 3,200 megapixel Legacy Survey of Space and Time camera will produce an enormous trove of data valuable to everyone from cosmologists to the people who track asteroids that might collide with Earth.
You may already have read about how the Rubin Observatory's Simonyi Survey Telescope will gather light from the universe and shine it on the Department of Energy's LSST Camera, how researchers will manage the data that comes from the camera, and the myriad things they'll try to learn about the universe around us.
What you probably haven't read about is how researchers will get that mountain of incredibly detailed images off the back of the world's largest digital camera, down fiber optic cables and into the computers that will send them off Cerro Pachón in Chile and out into the world.
Gregg Thayer, a scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, is the person in charge of Rubin's data acquisition system, which handles this essential process.
Imagining an Earthly neighbor
Thursday, 10 March 2022 14:00
We do not yet know whether the sun-like stars closest to us, the α Centauri A/B binary, harbor an Earth-like planet. However, thanks to new modeling work, we now have a good sense of what such a planet, should it exist, would look like and how it might have evolved.
These are exciting times for exoplanet research, moving from demography towards detailed characterization. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), successfully launched in December 2021, is projected to detect the atmospheres of rocky exoplanets transiting in front of M dwarfs—stars that are fainter than the sun—orbiting within the habitable zone. The Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), currently under construction in Chile, will be set up to directly image rocky exoplanets around nearby sun-like stars by the end of the decade. Looking even further ahead, ambitious future space mission concepts are currently being explored, including the Large Interferometer for Exoplanets (LIFE), which targets habitable-zone rocky exoplanets and their atmospheres.
ETH Zurich is leading or significantly involved in these and other observational infrastructures. Complementary research at the Institute for Particle Physics and Astrophysics in the Department of Physics concerns numerical modeling, which is indispensable for understanding habitable-zone rocky exoplanets and in guiding the future observations and instrumentation development.