US candidate to be first woman to lead UN telecoms agency
Friday, 30 September 2022 20:01Doreen Bogdan-Martin will become the first woman to head the U.N.’s telecoms agency in its 157-year history from January, and the first American in the role since the 1960s after beating a Russian leadership challenge.
Space surveillance telescope developed by the U.S. begins operations in Australia
Friday, 30 September 2022 16:42The Space Surveillance Telescope, declared operational Sept. 30, will join the network of sensors used by the United States, Australia and other allies to track objects in orbit
National Space Council to seek industry input on future regulatory framework
Friday, 30 September 2022 15:33The National Space Council plans to hold “learning sessions” with industry in coming weeks on how to develop a new regulatory framework for novel commercial space activities.
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Tents for Industry Space Days
Friday, 30 September 2022 14:50Venus: The trouble with sending people there
Friday, 30 September 2022 14:27Venus, often called Earth's "evil twin" planet, formed closer to the sun and has since evolved quite differently from our own planet. It has a "runaway" greenhouse effect (meaning heat is completely trapped), a thick carbon-dioxide-rich atmosphere, no magnetic field and a surface hot enough to melt lead.
Several uncrewed scientific missions will study how and why that happened in the next decade. But now some scientists want to send a crewed mission there as well for a flyby. Is that a good idea?
With a slightly smaller diameter than Earth, Venus orbits closer to the sun. This means that any water on the surface would have evaporated shortly after its formation, starting its greenhouse effect. Early and sustained volcanic eruptions created lava plains and increased the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere—starting the runaway greenhouse effect, which increased the temperature from just a little higher than Earth's to its current high value of 475°C.
While the Venus year is shorter than ours (225 days), its rotation is very slow (243 days) and "retrograde"—the other way round to Earth. The slow rotation is related to a lack of magnetic field, resulting in a continuing loss of atmosphere.
Space Force studying requirements for cislunar space domain awareness
Friday, 30 September 2022 14:21The Space Force expects to know by next spring what capabilities it will need to carry out space domain awareness activities in cislunar space.
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Europe’s space industry gathers at ESA
Friday, 30 September 2022 13:45ESA welcomed a record 1700 visitors from 800 companies and institutions to its Industry Space Days event on 28–29 September at ESTEC, its technical centre in The Netherlands. It is a place where industry can meet and share their ideas for new emerging uses of space and commercial potential.
Week in images: 26-30 September 2022
Friday, 30 September 2022 12:07Week in images: 26-30 September 2022
Discover our week through the lens
South Korea seeks $32.9 million to launch satellites grounded by Russia sanctions
Friday, 30 September 2022 11:34SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s science ministry plans to set aside 47.2 billion won ($32.9 million) in next year’s budget to launch two satellites that have been left grounded because of Western sanctions on Russia over the war in Ukraine.
NASA and SpaceX to study possible private Hubble servicing mission
Friday, 30 September 2022 11:30NASA and SpaceX announced Sept. 29 they will study a concept to send a Crew Dragon spacecraft to reboost, and possibly service, the Hubble Space Telescope to extend its life.
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Satellite Vu signs SpaceX launch contract to deploy thermal monitoring capabilities
Friday, 30 September 2022 10:17British Earth Observation company, Satellite Vu has signed a second SpaceX launch contract for their second satellite, doubling their thermal data collection capacity, faster than planned, amidst rising climate concerns. The deal will see Satellite Vu's unique Mid-wave Infrared (MWIR) imaging satellite launched into Sun-synchronous orbit (SSO) aboard a Falcon 9 rocket in early 2024. The sa
Asteroid that formed Vredefort crater bigger than previously believed
Friday, 30 September 2022 10:17About two billion years ago, an impactor hurtled toward Earth, crashing into the planet in an area near present-day Johannesburg, South Africa. The impactor-most likely an asteroid-formed what is today the biggest crater on our planet. Scientists have widely accepted, based on previous research, that the impact structure, known as the Vredefort crater, was formed by an object about 15 kilo
Once upon a rover
Friday, 30 September 2022 10:17Once upon a time - early 2013 - there was a small corner room in the Flight Projects building at JPL where the walls and windows were coated in pages and pages of paper. These pages contained the facts and arguments being assembled by the Mars 2020 Science Definition Team, who were asking: what must the next rover to Mars do? We rearranged those pages over and over during the next few mont
China's Mars rover reveals more of subsurface
Friday, 30 September 2022 10:17What does the subsurface of Mars' northern lowlands have in common with a French mille crepe cake? They both consist of a number of layers, according to the latest findings by China's Zhurong Mars rover published in the journal Nature on Monday. The discovery showed that the evolution of the Martian surface environment is more varied and complex than previously anticipated, experts said. L
Lunar glass shows Moon asteroid impacts mirrored on Earth
Friday, 30 September 2022 10:17A Curtin-led research team has found asteroid impacts on the Moon millions of years ago coincided precisely with some of the largest meteorite impacts on Earth, such as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. The study also found that major impact events on Earth were not stand-alone events, but were accompanied by a series of smaller impacts, shedding new light on asteroid dynamics in the i