Paris, France (SPX) May 14, 2025
For the first time, the European Space Agency's Proba-3 mission has achieved precise formation flying, maintaining millimetre-level alignment between two spacecraft in orbit without ground control for several hours. The mission's two satellites, the Coronagraph and the Occulter, achieved a 150-metre separation in orbit, effectively acting as a single giant instrument. This alignment was th

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Apr 10, 2025
China's Tianwen-2 asteroid sample return mission is set to launch this month, May 2025, en route to the asteroid Kamo?oalewa (2016 HO3). The country could join the United States and Japan, whose space agencies have both successfully retrieved a sample from an asteroid to study back on Earth. Several space missions have flown by asteroids before and gotten a peek at their compositions, but

Los Angeles CA (SPX) May 14, 2025
NASA is pushing the boundaries of construction technology to support long-term human exploration of the Moon and Mars. By focusing on in-situ resource utilization, the agency aims to reduce the need for costly Earth-based supplies. The Moon to Mars Planetary Autonomous Construction Technology (MMPACT) project, funded by NASA's Game Changing Development program and managed by the Marshall Space F

Sydney (AFP) May 14, 2025
An Australian company says it aims to make the first orbital test launch of a locally-developed rocket on Thursday, carrying a jar of Vegemite as its payload. The three-stage Eris rocket is set to fly from a spaceport near Bowen on the east coast, said its developer, Gilmour Space Technologies. If successful, it would be the first Australian-made rocket to make an orbital launch from Aus

A science team has combined data from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope and the Keck II telescope to see evidence of cloud convection on Saturn’s moon Titan in the northern hemisphere for the first time. Most of Titan’s lakes and seas are located in that hemisphere, and are likely replenished by an occasional rain of methane and ethane. Webb also has detected a key carbon-containing molecule that gives insight into the chemical processes in Titan’s complex atmosphere.

Image: Decommissioning Galileo satellites - Infographic

Boulder CO (SPX) May 13, 2025
University of Colorado Boulder astrophysicist Jeremy Darling is pursuing a new way of measuring the universe's gravitational wave background-the constant flow of waves that churn through the cosmos, warping the very fabric of space and time. The research, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, could one day help to unlock some of the universe's deepest mysteries, including how gra

Sydney, Australia (SPX) May 13, 2025
HEO and BAE Systems have announced a collaboration aimed at delivering a comprehensive geospatial exploitation solution that integrates HEO's resolved Non-Earth Imagery (NEI) with BAE Systems' latest SOCET GXP software capability, Non-Earth Registration (NER). This combined approach enables the creation of precise sensor models for HEO's NEI data, enhancing customers' ability to derive critical

London, UK (SPX) May 13, 2025
Researchers from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), and institutes across India and Saudi Arabia have discovered 26 new bacterial species in the cleanrooms used to assemble spacecraft. These microbes exhibit genetic traits linked to extreme resilience, offering insights into how life might survive in space and potential biotech applica

Washington DC (SPX) May 13, 2025
New details about the crust on Venus include some surprises about the geology of Earth's hotter twin, according to new NASA-funded research that describes movements of the planet's crust. Scientists expected the outermost layer of Venus' crust would grow thicker and thicker over time given its apparent lack of forces that would drive the crust back into the planet's interior. But the paper