Air Force validates Boeing’s new WGS satellite
Friday, 22 September 2023 22:13NASA ready for OSIRIS-REx sample return
Friday, 22 September 2023 21:23NASA Scientists to Discuss Oct. 14 'Ring of Fire' Solar Eclipse
Friday, 22 September 2023 18:03Satellogic relocating to the United States in search of government growth
Friday, 22 September 2023 17:45Opinion: As space exploration and colonization expand, off-Earth resources will create a booming market
Friday, 22 September 2023 16:22The drive to explore deeper into space and establish colonies on other planets has intensified over the last decade, and with it the importance of space resources extraction.
Obtaining valuable resources and minerals, even in extreme environments, has long been attractive to humans. We have a history of facing hazards in search of valuable resources. From the gold rush in the 1800s to the recent surge in space resources, humans have been willing to take risks to find and collect scarce and profitable materials.
With advances in space technology, we're on the edge of the next gold rush—but not on Earth. Based on recent scientific and engineering breakthroughs and commercial interests, off-Earth mining is expected to begin in the next decade.
Potential mining sites include the moon, Mars and its moons, asteroids and even comets. Market predictions for lunar mining, particularly lunar water, project a multibillion-dollar industry by 2050. Although theoretical, these forecasts signal a worthwhile market, with Australia as a potential leader.
The motivation for off-Earth mining is multifaceted: access to an unlimited wealth of valuable space resources, the spirit of discovering new planets and the development of spin-off technologies to be used back on Earth.
Solar sails could reach Mars in just 26 days
Friday, 22 September 2023 16:02A recent study submitted to Acta Astronautica and currently available on the arXiv preprint server explores the potential for using aerographite solar sails for traveling to Mars and interstellar space, which could dramatically reduce both the time and fuel required for such missions.
This study comes while ongoing research into the use of solar sails is being conducted by a plethora of organizations along with the successful LightSail2 mission by The Planetary Society, and holds the potential to develop faster and more efficient propulsion systems for long-term space missions.
Chandrayaan-3's measurements of sulfur open the doors for lunar science and exploration
Friday, 22 September 2023 14:56In an exciting milestone for lunar scientists around the globe, India's Chandrayaan-3 lander touched down 375 miles (600 km) from the south pole of the moon on Aug. 23, 2023.
In just under 14 Earth days, Chandrayaan-3 provided scientists with valuable new data and further inspiration to explore the moon. And the Indian Space Research Organization has shared these initial results with the world.
While the data from Chandrayaan-3's rover, named Pragyan, or "wisdom" in Sanskrit, showed the lunar soil contains expected elements such as iron, titanium, aluminum and calcium, it also showed an unexpected surprise—sulfur.
Planetary scientists like me have known that sulfur exists in lunar rocks and soils, but only at a very low concentration. These new measurements imply there may be a higher sulfur concentration than anticipated.
Parker Probe's path through solar blast yields unparalleled space weather insights
Friday, 22 September 2023 11:28NASA's Parker Solar Probe has racked up an impressive list of superlatives in its first five years of operations: It's the closest spacecraft to the sun, the fastest human-made object and the first mission to ever "touch the sun."
Now, Parker has one more feather to add to its sun-kissed cap: It's the first spacecraft ever to fly through a powerful solar explosion near the sun.
House Speaker introduces bill to extend commercial spaceflight regulatory learning period
Friday, 22 September 2023 11:12Amazon empowers Alexa with generative AI
Friday, 22 September 2023 08:35Amazon's popular Alexa digital assistant is about to be supercharged with the powers of generative artificial intelligence, the company said on Wednesday, as the tech giant steps into the AI race dominated by ChatGPT, Google and Microsoft. Voice assistants like Alexa or Apple's Siri are often designated as perfect candidates to have their sometimes-glitchy and robot-like technology streamlin
Microsoft to offer OpenAI's Dall-E 3 in Bing
Friday, 22 September 2023 08:35Microsoft on Thursday said it would integrate OpenAI's soon to be released Dall-E 3 image creation tool into its Bing search engine, in its latest effort to use artificial intelligence to compete with the almighty Google. Two versions of Dall-E were developed by OpenAI and presaged the massive explosion of interest in generative AI that came when it released ChatGPT late last year. Dall-
Earth from Space: Scorched Rhodes
Friday, 22 September 2023 07:00New Mars gravity analysis improves understanding of possible ancient ocean
Friday, 22 September 2023 06:19The first use of a novel method of analyzing Mars' gravitational force supports the idea that the planet once had an extensive northern ocean. In doing so, the method defines the scope of what scientists refer to as the northern Martian paleo-ocean in more detail. The work was published in July in the journal Icarus, which is affiliated with the American Astronomical Society's Division for Plane
NASA Releases Independent Review's Mars Sample Return Report
Friday, 22 September 2023 06:19An Independent Review Board (IRB) looked at NASA's current plans and goals of the first mission to return samples from Mars, and NASA is establishing a team to respond. In addition to bringing home the first sample collected from Mars, this highly complex mission would include the first launch from the surface of another planet, as well as the first in orbit rendezvous at another planet. M
China releases first image captured by new wide-field survey telescope
Friday, 22 September 2023 06:19A wide-field telescope capable of surveying the entire Northern Hemisphere sky was put into operation on Sunday in northwest China's Qinghai Province, and its first image - the Andromeda Galaxy, located over 2 million light-years away - has already been released. Developed by the University of Science and Technology of China and the Purple Mountain Observatory under the Chinese Academy of