Simulating Aeolus's return: mission control feels the heat
Wednesday, 19 July 2023 11:31
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No two missions are the same but launches have many milestones and features in common with each other: a satellite or spacecraft is launched on a gravity-defying rocket into space, after it separates and, exact sequences differ but it is woken up, solar arrays are deployed, instruments are switched on and tested and its thrusters are fired to get it where it needs to be.
Five years ago, Ae Training robots how to learn, make decisions on the fly
Wednesday, 19 July 2023 11:31 Write a comment
Mars rovers have teams of human experts on Earth telling them what to do. But robots on lander missions to moons orbiting Saturn or Jupiter are too far away to receive timely commands from Earth. Researchers in the Departments of Aerospace Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign developed a novel learning-based method so robots on extraterrestrial bodies c Urania: muse of gravitational-wave astronomy
Wednesday, 19 July 2023 11:31 Write a comment
The new supercomputer "Urania" has been put into operation by the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam. With 6,048 compute-cores and 22 Terabyte of memory it is just as powerful as its predecessor, but requires only half the electricity to operate. Scientists in the Astrophysical and Cosmological Relativity department are now able to compute gravitational waveforms of coales Replay: Aeolus reentry media briefing
Wednesday, 19 July 2023 11:00 Write a comment
Video:
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After completing its mission in orbit, ESA’s wind mission Aeolus will soon reenter Earth's atmosphere. Currently orbiting 320 km above, Aeolus is being kept in orbit with its remaining fuel. This fuel is running out, and the satellite will soon succumb to Earth’s atmosphere and gravity.
Going above and beyond what the satellite was technically designed to do, ESA is attempting a first-of-its-kind assisted reentry to reduce the (already very small) risk of damage from any fragments that survive the journey and reach the ground.
ESA held an online media briefing on 19 July 2023 to explain more about this assisted
Insurers brace for ViaSat-3 claim
Wednesday, 19 July 2023 08:47 Write a comment
The potential failure of a Viasat broadband satellite could result in a massive claim and a “huge hit” for the space insurance sector, one insurer warns.
The clays of Mawrth Vallis
Wednesday, 19 July 2023 08:00 Write a comment
ESA's Mars Express has revisited an old favourite: the distinctive and fascinating Mawrth Vallis, one of the most promising locations on Mars in our search for signs of life.
Rocket Lab launch enables Telesat to restart LEO demonstrations
Tuesday, 18 July 2023 19:16 Write a comment
Telesat is preparing to resume demonstrations for its delayed low Earth orbit broadband constellation after Rocket Lab successfully launched the Canadian operator’s latest prototype satellite.
Venezuela signs up to China’s moon base initiative
Tuesday, 18 July 2023 18:03 Write a comment
Venezuela has formally joined the China-led International Lunar Research Station project.
The post Venezuela signs up to China’s moon base initiative appeared first on SpaceNews.
NASA's Psyche mission enters home stretch before launch
Tuesday, 18 July 2023 17:45 Write a comment
Engineers and technicians at Cape Canaveral are preparing the Psyche spacecraft for liftoff, which is slated for Oct. 5.
With less than 100 days to go before its Oct. 5 launch, NASA's Psyche spacecraft is undergoing final preparations at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Teams of engineers and technicians are working almost around the clock to ensure the orbiter is ready to journey 2.5 billion miles (4 billion kilometers) to a metal-rich asteroid that may tell us more about planetary cores and how planets form.
The mission team recently completed a comprehensive test campaign of the flight software and installed it on the spacecraft, clearing the hurdle that kept Psyche from making its original 2022 launch date.
First BepiColombo flyby of Mercury finds electron rain triggers X-ray auroras
Tuesday, 18 July 2023 15:09 Write a comment
BepiColombo, the joint European Space Agency (ESA) and Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) mission, has revealed how electrons raining down onto the surface of Mercury can trigger high-energy auroras.
The mission, which has been enroute to the solar system's innermost planet since 2018, successfully carried out its first Mercury flyby on October 1, 2021. An international team of researchers analyzed data from three of BepiColombo's instruments during the encounter. The outcomes of this study have been published in Nature Communications.
Terrestrial auroras are generated by interactions between the solar wind, a stream of charged particles emitted by the sun, and an electrically charged upper layer of Earth's atmosphere, called the ionosphere.
Simulating Aeolus’s return: mission control feels the heat
Tuesday, 18 July 2023 14:00
When ET calls, can we be sure we're not being spoofed?
Tuesday, 18 July 2023 10:44 Write a comment
Scientists have devised a new technique for finding and vetting possible radio signals from other civilizations in our galaxy - a major advance in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) that will significantly boost confidence in any future detection of alien life.
Most of today's SETI searches are conducted by Earth-based radio telescopes, which means that any ground or satel XRISM mission to study 'rainbow' of x-rays
Tuesday, 18 July 2023 10:44 Write a comment
A new satellite called XRISM (X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission, pronounced "crism") aims to pry apart high-energy light into the equivalent of an X-ray rainbow. The mission, led by JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), will do this using an instrument called Resolve.
XRISM is scheduled to launch from Japan's Tanegashima Space Center on Aug. 25, 2023 (Aug. 26 in Japan).
"Re Astronomers discover striking evidence of 'unusual' stellar evolution
Tuesday, 18 July 2023 10:44 Write a comment
Astronomers have found evidence that some stars boast unexpectedly strong surface magnetic fields, a discovery that challenges current models of how they evolve.
In stars like our sun, surface magnetism is linked to stellar spin, a process similar to the inner workings of a hand-cranked flashlight. Strong magnetic fields are seen in the hearts of magnetic sunspot regions, and cause a varie