ESA’s Mars Express has captured the rare moment of Mars’ small moon Deimos passing in front of Jupiter and its four largest moons ­– the focus of ESA’s upcoming Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer launching next year. Celestial alignments like these enable a more precise determination of the martian moons’ orbits.

Pasadena CA (JPL) Oct 13, 2022
New research makes hypotheses that NASA's Europa Clipper can test: Any plumes or volcanic activity at the Jovian moon's surface are caused by shallow lakes in its icy crust. In the search for life beyond Earth, subsurface bodies of water in our outer solar system are some of the most important targets. That's why NASA is sending the Europa Clipper spacecraft to Jupiter's moon Europa: There

Leicester UK (SPX) Oct 13, 2022
The cocktail of chemicals that make up the frozen surfaces on two of Jupiter's largest moons are revealed in the most detailed images ever taken of them by a telescope on Earth. Planetary scientists from the University of Leicester's School of Physics and Astronomy have unveiled new images of Europa and Ganymede, two future destinations for exciting new missions to the Jovian system.

Washington DC (SPX) Oct 13, 2022
Analysis of data obtained over the past two weeks by NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) investigation team shows the spacecraft's kinetic impact with its target asteroid, Dimorphos, successfully altered the asteroid's orbit. This marks humanity's first time purposely changing the motion of a celestial object and the first full-scale demonstration of asteroid deflection technology.

Pasadena CA (JPL) Oct 13, 2022
This morning's planning kicked off with great news! Our Sol 3620 SAM data of the Canaima drill sample was interesting enough to proceed with planning a Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometry (GCMS) experiment. This type of activity is one of SAM's specialties and can help characterize the chemistry of the rock we're parked in front of, including the presence of compounds essential to life as we kno

Paris (ESA) Oct 13, 2022
We have now discovered 30 039 near-Earth asteroids in the Solar System - rocky bodies orbiting the Sun on a path that brings them close to Earth's orbit. The majority of these were discovered in the last decade, showing how our ability to detect potentially risky asteroids is rapidly improving. An asteroid is called a near-Earth asteroid (NEA) when its trajectory brings it within 1.3 Astro

Utrecht, The Netherlands (SPX) Oct 13, 2022
At a slow pace, the Moon is moving away from the Earth and the Earth is rotating more slowly around its axis. To say something about these changes in the distant past, geologists use information stored in rocks and fossils. But the further back in time they look, the more difficult it becomes to retrieve this information. An international team of earth scientists has now managed to accurately de

Long Beach CA (SPX) Oct 13, 2022
Building on their shared record for successful collaboration in responsive space, Spire Global, Inc. (NYSE: SPIR), a global provider of space-based data, analytics and space services, has entered a binding Launch Service Agreement with leading launch provider, Virgin Orbit (Nasdaq: VORB), to purchase multiple launches over several years. The first launch is expected to take place in 2023.

Wallops Island, VA (SPX) Oct 13, 2022
Rocket Lab USA, Inc. (Nasdaq: RKLB) reports that the Electron rocket to be launched in the Company's first mission from U.S. soil has arrived at Launch Complex 2 in Virginia. The mission will deploy satellites for radio frequency geospatial analytics provider HawkEye 360 and will be Rocket Lab's first lift-off from Launch Complex 2 at Virginia Space's Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport within

Alameda CA (SPX) Oct 13, 2022
Astra Space, Inc. ("Astra") (Nasdaq: ASTR) announced that it has reached an agreement with Maxar Technologies ("Maxar") (TSX:MAXR) to supply Astra Spacecraft Engines. The propulsion systems will be used in Maxar's proliferated low Earth orbit (LEO) spacecrafts, which support a wide variety of global coverage missions, including Earth observation, communications and national security. Astra expec