Barcelona (AFP) Mar 5, 2025
Satellite communication is taking smartphones to new orbits at this year's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, with companies showcasing gadgets connected to space in a bid to tap into the lucrative new service. Infrastructure costs and technical and regulatory hurdles mean it will be some time yet before handsets worldwide are beaming calls and data directly to Earth orbit - even as firms

Washington (AFP) Mar 6, 2025
Elon Musk's SpaceX is now aiming for Thursday to conduct the next test flight of its massive Starship rocket, following a last-minute cancellation on Monday. The world's biggest and most powerful launch vehicle is set to lift off from SpaceX's Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, during a launch window that opens at 5:30 pm local time (2330 GMT). An earlier attempt set for Wednesday was postponed a day without explanation.

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Mar 06, 2025
Lonestar Data Holdings has reached a critical milestone with the successful testing and operation of its commercial data center payload while traveling through space en route to the Moon. This achievement marks a major step toward establishing the first-ever commercial lunar data center, reinforcing the vision of a robust and resilient space-based data infrastructure. Since its launch on F

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Mar 06, 2025
Channels carved by rivers, lava, and ice all exhibit winding, sinuous patterns, yet a new study from The University of Texas at Austin has identified a fundamental difference in the way rivers bend compared to volcanic and ice-carved channels. This discovery may provide a new method for determining the origins of planetary channels where direct observation is not possible. While the specif

Madrid, Spain (SPX) Mar 06, 2025
The Mobile Satellite Services Association (MSSA) and the European Space Agency (ESA) have announced a strategic alliance aimed at enhancing the future of 5G and 6G open architecture, standards-based satellite Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTNs). This collaboration seeks to integrate satellite and terrestrial networks for Direct-to-Device (D2D) services, expanding connectivity solutions while ensurin

Boston MA (SPX) Mar 05, 2025
When Zoe Fisher was in fourth grade, her art teacher asked her to draw her vision of a dream job on paper. At the time, those goals changed like the flavor of the week in an ice cream shop - "zookeeper" featured prominently for a while - but Zoe immediately knew what she wanted to put down: a mad scientist. When Fisher stumbled upon the drawing in her parents' Chicago home recently, it fel

Tokyo (AFP) Mar 4, 2025
Japanese startup ispace on Tuesday set a June 6 target touchdown date for its Moon lander, following the success of its rocket "rideshare" buddy, a spacecraft from a US firm. ispace's unmanned Resilience lander was launched in January on the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket together with Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost - which aced its lunar landing on Sunday. Blue Ghost is only the second private

It's a long way to Mars, and explorers headed there will either have to take enough food and supplies to last the whole trip or use in-situ resources to make what they need. A recent ESA Discovery project led by the Universitat de València explored whether microalgae extracted from lichen could survive on Mars and be used to produce oxygen, food and other useful substances.

The methane emitted in 2022 by the damaged Nord Stream gas pipelines was more than double the volume estimated at the time, according to a study published in Nature.

A compelling collection of images that illustrates humanity’s efforts to mitigate the far-reaching impacts of violent solar outbursts has been unveiled in London.