Image: Mind the stars
Friday, 05 November 2021 11:43
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Space can be a cruel mistress, but she is a beautiful one.
As we await the launch of ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer and the return of Thomas Pesquet, let us marvel at the fact that humans live and work in space, an environment so inhospitable to us.
As Thomas nears the end of his six-month mission Alpha on the Space Station, he took this image, noting that living on the International Space Station "really feels like flying on a spaceship into the cosmos… or wait… that's what we do."
While astronauts are often pointing their cameras down to Earth, Thomas looked up for this image. "When you let your eyes adapt to the night, you start seeing millions of stars and it's amazing…there's also a lot of beauty in the cosmos itself, it's just harder to see (and to photograph) at first."
Thanks to collective human intelligence and cooperation, the International Space Station has been a reality for over 20 years, hosting astronauts who run experiments and monitor our planet from above. While launches are quite routine these days, delays happen but that's the space business.
Development of the demonstration satellite HIBARI with variable shape attitude control
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A research team led by Professor Saburo Matunaga of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, School of Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech), developed a 50-kg-class technology demonstration microsatellite called HIBARI that denotes "skylark" in English. The purpose of this satellite is the on-orbit demonstration of Variable Shape Attitude Control (VSAC) technology where attitude and orbit are controlled using a variable structure, and the satellite adjusts the attitude via the recoil from the movement of the four movable solar cell paddles. By deploying and retracting the paddles, atmospheric drag can be adjusted and used for orbit control.
HIBARI was selected as a demonstration theme for Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)'s Innovative Satellite Technology Demonstration (ISTD), and it will be launched on Epsilon-5 sometime after November 2021 from the Uchinoura Space Center. The satellite will be launched into a sun-synchronous orbit at 9:30 Local Sun time at Descending Node with a perigee altitude of 547 km and apogee altitude of 565 km for demonstrating VSAC technology in space.
iRocket And Turion Space ink agreement for 10 launches to low earth orbit
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On November 4, 2021, iRocket announced that the company signed an agreement with Turion Space Corp in Irvine, CA. Said iRocket CEO Asad Malik, "We are excited about this new partnership with Turion Space to provide rapid access to space and cost competitive launch costs for their 20 Droid satellites and the low-cost final orbit delivery option their Droid satellites will bring to some of our own Judge tosses Blue Origin's lawsuit over SpaceX lunar contract
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A federal judge on Thursday threw out Blue Origin's latest legal attempt to block SpaceX's $2.9 billion lunar lander contract from NASA.
"The defendant's motion to dismiss ... is granted," Federal Claims Court judge Richard Hertling wrote in an order, citing a sealed opinion that he also signed.
Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' rocket company, had sued Elon Musk's SpaceX and the U.S. gov BT secures industry first Global Partnership with OneWeb
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BT and OneWeb have agreed terms for a new Distribution Partner Agreement, with OneWeb to provide low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite communication services across BT Group.* This builds on an initial Memorandum of Understanding signed in July and means BT is testing how LEO satellite technology integrates with its existing terrestrial capabilities to meet the communications needs of customers. On su CADRE of Mini Rovers Navigate Simulated Lunar Terrain
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A team of shoebox-sized rover scouts was recently put to the test at a NASA Glenn Research Center lab. The facility, called the Simulated Lunar Operations lab (or SLOPE) is designed to mimic lunar and planetary surface operations. The mini rovers traversed simulated lunar soil - called regolith - to better understand the types of challenges that lunar rovers of this size will face on the Moon's American Astronomical Society Supports Astro2020 Decadal Survey
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The American Astronomical Society (AAS), a major international organization of professional astronomers, astronomy educators, and amateur astronomers, supports the decadal survey report identifying scientific and foundational priorities, opportunities, and funding recommendations for astronomy and astrophysics in the coming decade and beyond. The report of the Astro2020 steering committee, sever NASA could return astronauts on space station before replacements arrive
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Four astronauts could leave the International Space Station on Sunday without their replacement team having arrived to take over, NASA announced Thursday, but the timing remains uncertain due to weather conditions.
The four members of the Crew-2 mission, including a French and a Japanese astronaut, are due to return to Earth this month after spending about six months on board the ISS.
N NASA, SpaceX Reviewing Commercial Crew Rotation Plans
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NASA and SpaceX continue to review launch and return opportunities for the upcoming crew rotation flights to and from the International Space Station as part of the agency's Commercial Crew Program.
Mission teams now are considering whether to return the agency's SpaceX Crew-2 mission from the space station ahead of launching the next crew rotation due to the associated weather considerati SIRIUS-21 to simulate flight to Moon starts in Moscow
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International isolation experiment SIRIUS-21 to simulate the flight and landing on the moon started on Thursday in Moscow, a Sputnik correspondent reported from the Institute of Biomedical Problems (IBMP) of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Six people went on a conditional trip to the moon: Oleg Blinov, an instructor of the Cosmonaut Training Center; Viktoria Kirichenko, a surgeon at the I NASA Statement on Artemis Lunar Lander Court Decision
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NASA was notified Thursday that the U.S. Court of Federal Claims denied Blue Origin's bid protest, upholding NASA's selection of SpaceX to develop and demonstrate a modern human lunar lander. NASA will resume work with SpaceX under the Option A contract as soon as possible.
In addition to this contract, NASA continues working with multiple American companies to bolster competition and comm Next space telescope should exceed James Webb' s ability to study planets
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NASA should begin plan for a massive new space telescope - one bigger than the largest telescope in history, the James Webb Space Telescope, according to a report from scientists around the country released Thursday.
"This large strategic mission is of an ambitious scale that only NASA can undertake and for which the U.S. is uniquely situated to lead," according to the National Academy New great observatories, including Lynx, top ranked by Decadal Survey
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The 2020 Decadal Survey for Astronomy and Astrophysics has recommended a new series of three Great Observatories - or space-based telescopes - as a top national priority for the future of space astrophysics.
The Lynx X-Ray Observatory is included as part of this vision. Dozens of scientists and engineers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard and Smithsonian teamed with colleagues around Next Generation Very Large Array strongly endorsed by Decadal Survey
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The Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey (Astro2020) of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences has published its report and the Next Generation Very Large Array (ngVLA) received high priority for new ground-based observatories to be constructed during the coming decade. The report, in which ngVLA shared second ranking among ground-based projects, was the culmination of a lengthy process aime Researchers begin to understand correlation of schumann resonances and dust storms on Mars
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The interaction of dust particles in Martian dust storms may cause electric fields that are powerful enough to have charges that induce standing electromagnetic waves known as S?humann resonances. This is the conclusion drawn by physicists from HSE University, the Space Research Institute, and MIPT. The paper was published in Icarus journal.
Mars has been a focus of active study over the l