Copernical Team
Summer stargazing treat as Perseid meteor shower reaches its peak
The Perseid meteor shower reaches its peak on the night of 11–12 August, giving skywatchers a potentially impressive summer treat. The meteors are best viewed from the northern hemisphere, and in ideal conditions with no clouds observers could see up to 50 an hour.
Meteors are the result of small particles entering the Earth's atmosphere at high speed, typically around 60 km per second.
NASA identifies likely locations of the early molten moon's deep secrets
Boeing Starliner launch delayed indefinitely
Boeing's Starliner won't launch Wednesday as had been planned following problems with its propulsion system that prevented a key uncrewed test flight to the international space station a day earlier—and it's not clear when the troubled spaceship will fly next.
The aerospace giant said in a statement that valves in Starliner's engine were in "unexpected" positions, forcing the mission team to halt the countdown.
NASA added that engineering teams have ruled out several potential causes, including a software glitch, but need more time to understand the issue.
"We're going to let the data lead our work," said John Vollmer, vice president and program manager of Boeing's Commercial Crew Program.
Impact of space station spin requires study, official says
Europe’s Spaceport gains new radar
A new additional radar called Amazonie-I installed at Pariacabo, a high point in Kourou, French Guiana, was tested during the recent Ariane 5 launch from Europe’s Spaceport.
No 'eureka moment': the evolution of climate science
What if Earth's atmosphere was infused with extra carbon dioxide, mused amateur scientist Eunice Foote in an 1856 research paper that concluded the gas was very good at absorbing heat.
"An atmosphere of that gas would give to our earth a high temperature," she wrote in the study, published in the American Journal of Science and Arts and then swiftly forgotten.
The American scientist a Decline in CO2 cooled earth's climate over 30 million years ago, scientists find
New research led by the University of Bristol demonstrates that a decline in the concentration of atmospheric CO2 played a major role in driving Earth's climate from a warm greenhouse into a cold icehouse world around 34 million years ago. This transition could be partly reversed in the next centuries due to the anthropogenic rise in CO2.
Between 40 and 34 million years ago, Earth's climat Water as a metal - detected at BESSY II
Under normal conditions, pure water is an almost perfect insulator. Water only develops metallic properties under extreme pressure, such as exists deep inside of large planets. Now, an international collaboration has used a completely different approach to produce metallic water and documented the phase transition at BESSY II. The study is published now in Nature.
Every child knows that wa DARPA Comb Technologies Yield Breakthroughs in Defense and Civilian Sectors
Revolutionary laser technologies pioneered in DARPA's Defense Sciences Office over the past decades are allowing Air Force researchers to precisely characterize combustion elements in next-generation jet engines and providing commercial gas and oil developers continuous, region-scale monitoring to rapidly detect methane leaks.
The Spectral Combs from UV to THz (SCOUT) program, which began Lucy boxed to go
NASA's first spacecraft to explore the Trojan asteroids arrived Friday, July 30, at the agency's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. It is now in a cleanroom at nearby Astrotech, ready to begin final preparations for its October launch.
The mission has a 23-day launch period beginning on October 16. Lucy will undergo final testing and fueling prior to being moved to its launch pad at Ca