Copernical Team
Sound of a dust devil on Mars recorded for first time
The sound of a dust devil on Mars was recorded for the first time as the eye of the whirlwind swept over the top of NASA's Perseverance rover, a new study said Tuesday.
"We hit the jackpot" when the rover's microphone picked up the noise made by the dust devil overhead, the study's lead author Naomi Murdoch told AFP.
The researchers hope the recording will help to better understand the US researchers announce historic nuclear fusion breakthrough
US researchers announced a historic nuclear fusion breakthrough on Tuesday, hailing a "landmark achievement" in the quest for a source of unlimited, clean power and an end to reliance on fossil fuels.
The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California said an experiment it conducted this month "produced more energy from fusion than the laser energy used to drive it."
The US Artemis I: liftoff to splashdown
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The uncrewed Artemis I test flight saw Orion travel around the Moon and farther than any spacecraft designed to carry humans and return them to Earth. Artemis is the international lunar exploration programme that is taking humankind to the Moon. This first mission provided a first test of both NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) and the Orion moonship that was propelled by the European Service Module’s 33 engines beyond the Moon and into deep space. Future European Service Modules will provide electricity, propulsion and cabin thermal control for astronauts on lunar missions as well as breathable atmosphere
Poland's only cosmonaut, who circled Earth in 1978, has died
Poland's only cosmonaut, Gen. Miroslaw Hermaszewski, who circled the Earth in a Soviet spacecraft in 1978, has died. He was 81.
The retired air force pilot's death on Monday was announced via Twitter by his son-in-law, European Parliament member Ryszard Czarnecki. He later told Polish media outlets that Hermaszewski died at a hospital in Warsaw of complications from a surgery he had undergone in the morning.
"On behalf of the family, I'm confirming the very sad news about the death of Gen. Miroslaw Hermaszewski," Czarnecki tweeted, calling him a "great pilot, good husband and father, and much beloved grandfather."
Hermaszewski became a national hero thanks to his trip to space. For nine days in June and July of 1978, Hermaszewski and Soviet cosmonaut Pyotr Klimuk circled the Earth in the Soyuz 30 spaceship that docked at the Salyut 6 orbital space station. They went around the globe 126 times.
In an 2018 interview with the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita, Hermaszewski said his biggest fear during the flight was that their spacecraft would be struck by a meteor. His and Klimuk's senses were sharpened, catching even the smallest sound, he said.
Orion splashes down in Pacific Ocean after trip around the moon
NASA's Orion capsule, after traveling 1.4 million miles through space, including orbiting the moon and collecting data, returned to Earth on Sunday.
The 25 1/2-day Artemis I mission landed in the Pacific Ocean off Mexico's Baja California at 12:40 p.m., NASA reported.
"Splashdown! From Tranquility Base to Taurus-Littrow to the tranquil waters of the Pacific, the latest chapter of FAST reveals unprecedented details of the Milky Way
Many bright stars gather in the night sky and form a Milky Way across the sky. It is our home galaxy in the vast universe, however, the structure and composition of the Milky Way are mysterious yet. The vast interstellar space between the billions of stars is not empty, but filled with tenuous interstellar medium.
The diffuse hydrogen gas radiates a spectral line with a frequency of around Scientists find new hints that dark matter could be made up of dark photons
Dark matter could be made up of ultralight dark photons that heated up our universe: this is a new scenario proposed in a study recently published in the scientific journal "Physical Review Letters". This hypothesis, the authors say, is in excellent agreement with observations made by the Cosmic Origin Spectrograph (COS) on board the Hubble Space Telescope, which takes measurements of the "cosmi US set to announce nuclear fusion breakthrough
The US Department of Energy said Sunday it would announce a "major scientific breakthrough" this week, after media reported a federal laboratory had recently achieved a major milestone in nuclear fusion research.
The Financial Times reported Sunday that scientists in the California-based Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) had achieved a "net energy gain" from an experimental fusio MTG-I1 rolled out and good to go
With liftoff set for today at 21:30 CET, the Ariane 5 rocket carrying the first Meteosat Third Generation Imager, MTG-I1, satellite is poised patiently on the launch pad at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana while the final checks are being carried out. Once in geostationary orbit, 36,000 km above the equator, this new satellite is set to herald a new era for meteorology.
Proposal for picogram-scale probes to explore nearby stars
In a forward-looking article, George Church, Ph.D., from Harvard University and the Wyss Institute, proposes the use of picogram to nanogram-scale probes that can land, replicate, and produce a communications module at the destination to explore nearby stars. The new article is published in a special issue on "Interstellar Objects in Astrobiology" of Astrobiology.
"One design is a highly reflective light sail, traveling a long straight line toward the gravitational well of a destination star, and the photo-deflected to the closest non-luminous mass—ideally a planet or moon with exposed liquid water," states Dr. Church.
"Most living cells on Earth are picogram-scale and yet perform functions, such as replication from only simple chemical inputs, impossible for all current human-made machines," notes Dr. Church. He considers factors such as acceleration and deceleration, and how to build communications devices using some form of electromagnetic radiation. Environments suitable for microbial replication require appropriate temperature, chemicals, and energy sources.
"Clearly, a considerable amount of work remains for improving the theory, design, and testing aspects of this proposal, some of which can be done on Earth or within our home solar system," concludes Dr.