17 years after founding Virgin Galactic, Branson bound for space
Sunday, 11 July 2021 10:39
He's always dreamed of it, and in 2004 founded his own company to make it happen.
On Sunday, billionaire Richard Branson will take off from a base in New Mexico aboard a Virgin Galactic vessel bound for the edge of space.
The Briton is hoping to finally get the nascent space tourism industry off the ground - but also go one up on Jeff Bezos by winning the race to be the first person to British billionaire Richard Branson plans to soar into space Sunday
Sunday, 11 July 2021 10:39
British billionaire Richard Branson on Sunday plans to become the first owner of a private space company to fly into space.
The flight of Branson's Virgin Galactic VSS Unity spaceship is scheduled to lift off sometime after 9 a.m. EDT from New Mexico's private Spaceport America, about 170 miles south of Albuquerque.
The company's gleaming white plane, VMS Eve, will carry the spac Reaction Engines secures new UK Government funding for Space Access Program
Sunday, 11 July 2021 10:39
The 3.9 million pound grant from the UK Space Agency will support the development of Reaction Engines' ground-breaking SABRE technology, enabling low-carbon air-breathing space access propulsion technology to be applied more widely in the space sector and beyond.
Science Minister Amanda Solloway and Transport Minister Rachel Maclean visited Reaction Engines at its site in Culham, Oxfordshi At 59, Kennedy Diversifies, Flourishes as Multi-User Spaceport
Sunday, 11 July 2021 10:39
In 1962 when America was going to the Moon, NASA established Kennedy Space Center in Florida as its Launch Operations Center. This month, the modernized multi-user spaceport marks its 59th anniversary while working to send Americans back to the Moon, helping grow the commercial space industry, and performing research that benefits humanity.
The launch of NASA's Artemis I mission - slated t Flight 9 was a nail-biter, but Ingenuity came through with flying colors
Sunday, 11 July 2021 10:39
It has been a week of heightened apprehension on the Mars Helicopter team as we prepared a major flight challenge for Ingenuity. We uplinked instructions for the flight, which occurred Monday, July 5 at 2:03 am PT, and waited nervously for results to arrive from Mars later that morning. The mood in the ground control room was jubilant when we learned that Ingenuity was alive and well after compl Curiosity rover finds patches of rock record erased, revealing clues
Sunday, 11 July 2021 10:39
Today, Mars is a planet of extremes - it's bitterly cold, has high radiation, and is bone-dry. But billions of years ago, Mars was home to lake systems that could have sustained microbial life. As the planet's climate changed, one such lake - in Mars' Gale Crater - slowly dried out. Scientists have new evidence that super salty water, or brines, seeped deep through the cracks, between grains of Early Earth was bombarded by series of city-sized asteroids
Sunday, 11 July 2021 10:39
Scientists know that the Earth was bombarded by huge impactors in distant time, but a new analysis suggest that the number of these impacts may have been x10 higher than previously thought.
This translates into a barrage of collisions, similar in scale to that of the asteroid strike which wiped out the dinosaurs, on average every 15 million years between 2.5 and 3.5 billion years ago. Some NASA, Northrop Grumman finalize Moon outpost living quarters contract
Sunday, 11 July 2021 10:39
NASA and Northrop Grumman of Dulles, Virginia, have finalized a contract to develop the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) for Gateway, which will be a critical way station and outpost in orbit around the Moon as part of NASA's Artemis program. NASA and its commercial and international partners are building Gateway to support science investigations and enable surface landings at the Moon, w Increasing demands putting pressure on Deep Space Network
Saturday, 10 July 2021 14:28
WASHINGTON — A growing number of spacecraft missions, as well as NASA’s Artemis program, are putting new pressures on the agency’s Deep Space Network of antennas that communicate with them.
In a July 7 presentation to the steering committee of the planetary science decadal survey, Brad Arnold, manager of the Deep Space Network (DSN) at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, says that even with upgrades to the radio antennas at sites in Australia, California and Spain, the system can’t keep up with growing demand from missions.
Explainer: How Richard Branson will ride own rocket to space
Saturday, 10 July 2021 08:00
Virgin Galactic will become the first rocket company to launch the boss when Richard Branson straps into one of his sleek, shiny space planes this weekend.
NASA awards contract to Northrop Grumman to build Gateway module
Friday, 09 July 2021 19:39
WASHINGTON — NASA has awarded a contract worth $935 million to Northrop Grumman to build and integrate the first habitation module for the lunar Gateway.
NASA announced July 9 it finalized a contract with Northrop Grumman to build the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) module for the Gateway.
The mystery of what causes Jupiter’s X-ray auroras is solved
Friday, 09 July 2021 17:00
The 40-year-old mystery of what causes Jupiter’s X-ray auroras has been solved. For the first time, astronomers have seen the entire mechanism at work – and it could be a process occurring in many other parts of the Universe too.
North Korea-linked hackers accessed South’s rocket developer: spy agency
Friday, 09 July 2021 14:57
SEOUL, South Korea – Hackers linked to North Korea broke into the network of a South Korean aerospace company last month that holds confidential rocket propulsion technologies developed for the nation’s first indigenous space launch vehicle KSLV-2, the state spy agency said July 8.
Image: Lunar hardware delivered to NASA Goddard
Friday, 09 July 2021 13:58
A new instrument that will fly to the moon has been delivered to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
The Peregrine Ion-Trap Mass Spectrometer (PITMS), led by Principal Investigator Dr. Barbara Cohen at NASA Goddard, was built and tested in collaboration with the European Space Agency, The Open University and RAL Space in the United Kingdom, and delivered to NASA Goddard in late June.
The instrument will explore how water molecules, possibly created on the surface by the solar wind, are released and move around the moon as the lunar surface heats up during the sunny part of the lunar day.
PITMS will be delivered to the moon by Astrobotic, one of the companies under contract for NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. Commercial companies will deliver dozens of new instruments and technology experiments to the moon throughout NASA's Artemis program. Artemis missions include both robotic and human exploration on and around the moon that will prepare humanity for our next giant leap—sending astronauts to Mars.
Rare meteorite could hold secrets to life on Earth
Friday, 09 July 2021 13:27
Scientists are set to uncover the secrets of a rare meteorite and possibly the origins of oceans and life on Earth, thanks to Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) funding.
Research carried out on the meteorite, which fell in the UK earlier this year, suggests that the space rock dates back to the beginning of the Solar System, 4.5 billion years ago.
The meteorite has now been officially classified, thanks in part to the STFC-funded studies on the sample.
The Winchcombe meteorite, aptly named after the Gloucestershire town where it landed, is an extremely rare type called a carbonaceous chondrite. It is a stony meteorite, rich in water and organic matter, which has retained its chemistry from the formation of the solar system. Initial analyses showing Winchcombe to be a member of the CM ("Mighei-like") group of carbonaceous chondrites have now been formally approved by the Meteoritical Society.