Riverside CA (SPX) Oct 01, 2021
When the world's most powerful telescope launches into space this year, scientists will learn whether Earth-sized planets in our 'solar neighborhood' have a key prerequisite for life - an atmosphere. These planets orbit an M-dwarf, the smallest and most common type of star in the galaxy. Scientists do not currently know how common it is for Earth-like planets around this type of star to ha

Greenbelt MD (SPX) Oct 01, 2021
NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has successfully passed its critical design review, signaling that all design and developmental engineering work is now complete. "After seeing our extensive hardware testing and sophisticated modeling, an independent review panel has confirmed that the observatory we have designed will work," said Julie McEnery, the Roman Space Telescope senior pro

Pasadena CA (SPX) Oct 01, 2021
Since LIGO's groundbreaking detection, in 2015, of gravitational waves produced by a pair of colliding black holes, the observatory, together with its European partner facility Virgo, has detected dozens of similar cosmic rumblings that send ripples through space and time. In the future, as more and more upgrades are made to the National Science Foundation-funded LIGO observatories-one in

The Space Force Intelligence Activity was stood up Sept. 24 as an interim organization until the National Space Intelligence Center is established.

SpaceNews

NASA’s administrator says he remains confident that Congress will provide the agency with funding to allow it to select a second lunar lander developer despite a lack of public progress on funding and concerns raised elsewhere in the agency about the effect an ongoing protest could have on congressional support for the program.

LaunchSpace Technologies Corp., a company developing technology to capture orbital debris, is the latest space startup to seek funding on an equity crowdfunding platform.

SpaceNews

Paris (ESA) Oct 04, 2021
The joint European-Japanese BepiColombo mission captured this view of Mercury on 1 October 2021 as the spacecraft flew past the planet for a gravity assist manoeuvre. The image was taken at 23:44:12 UTC by the Mercury Transfer Module's Monitoring Camera 2, when the spacecraft was about 2418 km from Mercury. Closest approach of about 199 km took place shortly before, at 23:34 UTC. In this v

Houston TX (SPX) Oct 04, 2021
NASA will provide coverage of a Tuesday, Oct. 5 launch that will carry a Russian cosmonaut, actress, and film producer to the International Space Station, where they will film segments for a movie. The launch will mark the expansion of commercial space opportunities to include feature filmmaking. Making his fourth flight into space, Roscosmos cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov will join actress Yu

Tucson AZ (SPX) Oct 04, 2021
Little is known about the population of metal-rich Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs), their number, origin, and relationship with meteorites found on Earth. A new paper by Planetary Science Institute Associate Research Scientist Juan Sanchez explains how near-infrared spectroscopic data of two NEAs reveals new information about the composition and physical properties of these bodies. "We find th

Chicago IL (SPX) Oct 04, 2021
It's not uncommon for scientists to bring interesting objects thousands of miles to Argonne National Laboratory for study. But it's fair to say that the latest of these to land at the laboratory came from much, much farther away. A team of scientists with Argonne and the University of Chicago is among the few groups around the world chosen to study tiny fragments of an asteroid. These dust