Slip and Pivot: Sol 3797
Thursday, 13 April 2023 08:49
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As you can see in the above image, the terrain our rover drivers is navigating is challenging - slippery sand surrounding big, wheel-unfriendly rocks. These contrasting regimes contributed to us not-quite-arriving at our planned workspace with all six wheels confidently on known terrain.
Thus, we had to pivot from a combined contact and remote science day, to one with remote science and a Taiwan seeks satellite solutions after undersea cables cut
Thursday, 13 April 2023 08:49 Write a comment
Taiwanese hostel worker Wang Chuang-jen's business took a hammering when undersea telecoms lines serving tiny Matsu archipelago were cut in February.
"It was very inconvenient," said the 35-year-old from Matsu's Beigan island, where customers struggled to book or pay online due to slow connectivity. "We all heavily depend on the internet."
The cut-off not only caused headaches for busine Ariane 5 VA 260 with Juice - Integration and rollout timelapse
Thursday, 13 April 2023 08:45 Write a comment
Video:
00:01:58
Ariane 5 VA 260 with Juice integration and rollout timelapse at Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana.
Juice – Jupiter Icy moons Explorer – is humankind’s next bold mission to the outer Solar System. This ambitious mission will characterise Ganymede, Callisto and Europa with a powerful suite of remote sensing, geophysical and in situ instruments to discover more about these compelling destinations as potential habitats for past or present life. Juice will monitor Jupiter’s complex magnetic, radiation and plasma environment in depth and its interplay with the moons, studying the Jupiter system as an archetype for gas giant systems across the Universe.
Following launch, Juice will
Europe's JUICE mission to launch for Jupiter's icy moons
Thursday, 13 April 2023 07:16 Write a comment
The European Space Agency's JUICE spacecraft is to blast off Thursday on an eight-year journey through the Solar System to discover whether Jupiter's icy moons are capable of hosting extraterrestrial life in their vast, hidden oceans.
The JUpiter ICy Moons Explorer (JUICE) has received the green light for its scheduled launch on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana at 1215 GMT.
"The weather conditions are good," Guiana Space Center director Marie-Anne Clair said on Wednesday in the control room, where Belgium's King Philippe was among those in attendance.
The six-tonne spacecraft, which is roughly four square meters, will separate from the rocket at an altitude of 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) a little under half an hour after blast-off.
Launch of Europe's JUICE spacecraft postponed to Friday (Update)
Thursday, 13 April 2023 07:16 Write a comment
The European Space Agency's JUICE spacecraft is to blast off Thursday on an eight-year journey through the Solar System to discover whether Jupiter's icy moons are capable of hosting extraterrestrial life in their vast, hidden oceans.
The JUpiter ICy Moons Explorer (JUICE) has received the green light for its scheduled launch on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana at 1215 GMT.
"The weather conditions are good," Guiana Space Center director Marie-Anne Clair said on Wednesday in the control room, where Belgium's King Philippe was among those in attendance.
The six-tonne spacecraft, which is roughly four square meters, will separate from the rocket at an altitude of 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) a little under half an hour after blast-off.
Weather delays launch of Europe's Jupiter mission by 24 hours (Update)
Thursday, 13 April 2023 07:16 Write a comment
The launch of the European Space Agency's JUICE mission, which aims to discover whether Jupiter's icy moons are capable of hosting extraterrestrial life, was postponed on Thursday for 24 hours due to bad weather.
The launch was called off just minutes before the planned lift-off at 1215 GMT from Europe's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, because of the threat of lightning in the cloudy skies overhead.
The next attempt will take place at 1214 GMT on Friday, the European Space Agency said.
Stephane Israel, the CEO of French firm Arianespace which provided the Ariane 5 rocket, said that with just minutes to spare, "a large mass of clouds approached and we absolutely could not proceed with the launch due to the risk of lightning".
For lift-off to go ahead, three parameters must get the green light: the launcher, the probe and the weather—which was "the final suspense," he told AFP.
Is the US in a space race against China
Thursday, 13 April 2023 06:58 Write a comment
Is the US in a space race against Chinas proclaiming the rise of a new "space race" between the U.S. and China have become common in news coverage following many of the exciting launches in recent years. Experts have pointed to China's rapid advancements in space as evidence of an emerging landscape where China is directly competing with the U.S. for supremacy.
This idea of a space race be Humans need Earth-like ecosystem for deep-space living
Thursday, 13 April 2023 06:58 Write a comment
Can humans endure long-term living in deep space? The answer is a lukewarm maybe, according to a new theory describing the complexity of maintaining gravity and oxygen, obtaining water, developing agriculture and handling waste far from Earth.
Dubbed the Pancosmorio theory - a word coined to mean "all world limit" - it was described in a paper published in Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Slingshot Aerospace expands network to optically track LEO satellites
Thursday, 13 April 2023 06:58 Write a comment
Slingshot Aerospace, the innovative technology company dedicated to improving spaceflight safety and optimizing orbital operations, has announced a significant expansion to the Slingshot Global Sensor Network's low-Earth orbit (LEO) tracking capabilities. The company is expanding its LEO tracking capabilities to make its network the largest commercial optical sensor network for LEO observation i Tendeg selected by Lockheed Martin as strategic supplier of deployable antennas
Thursday, 13 April 2023 06:58 Write a comment
Aerospace deployable antenna provider Tendeg LLC is pleased to announce it has been selected by Lockheed Martin as a strategic supplier for several of the company's critical global security space missions.
Tendeg is an innovative manufacturer of spacecraft antennas and deployable structures with full-range aerospace engineering services, including design, analysis, prototyping and flight u Raytheon and SpiderOak collaborate to secure satcoms in crowded LEO
Thursday, 13 April 2023 06:58 Write a comment
Raytheon Technologies' (NYSE: RTX) BBN division and SpiderOak announced a strategic partnership to develop and field a new generation of zero-trust security systems for satellite communications in proliferated low-Earth orbit, or pLEO.
SpiderOak's OrbitSecure solution will be combined with Raytheon BBN's Distributed, Disrupted, Disconnected and Denied (D4) secure cloud solution to ensure r Ball Aerospace, Loft Federal and Microsoft to Collaborate on SDA's NExT Program
Thursday, 13 April 2023 06:58 Write a comment
Ball Aerospace, Loft Federal and Microsoft has announced that they are working together on the Space Development Agency (SDA)'s experimental testbed program, called NExT, that will carry 10 satellites with experimental payloads into orbit.
SDA announced the contract award on Oct. 10, 2022. Ball Aerospace is the prime contractor, leading payload and spacecraft integration and test. Ball Aer Sidus Space and L3Harris yeam for the DoD Mentor-Protege Program
Thursday, 13 April 2023 06:58 Write a comment
Sidus Space, Inc. (NASDAQ:SIDU), a Space-as-a-Service company focused on commercial satellite design, manufacture, launch, and data collection, is teaming with L3Harris Technologies (NYSE:LHX) for the Department of Defense Mentor-Protege Program (MPP).
DoD program helps businesses expand their footprint in the defense industrial base by supporting their partnering efforts with larger compa Battle for space power plays out in technology, science - politics and policy
Thursday, 13 April 2023 06:58 Write a comment
The expanding use of outer space for human activities requires increasing attention to policies and governance, with a Flinders University space expert warning of an increasing need for a well-developed strategic plan to manage competing national interests.
In a new publication, Associate Professor Rodrigo Praino says the race to explore and possibly settle the Moon, Mars and control satel Civil engineers use public satellite images to study why the Jagersfontein dam failed
Thursday, 13 April 2023 06:58 Write a comment
On 11 September 2022, a diamond mine waste storage facility, known as a tailings dam, failed in the town of Jagersfontein in the Free State province of South Africa. In the failure, one person was killed and multiple homes destroyed.
Tailings are the finely ground leftovers that remain after valuable metals are removed from rock ore. Tailings are generally transported jointly with water an