TESS discovers four exoplanets orbiting a nearby sun-like star
Thursday, 28 January 2021 06:43
MIT researchers have discovered four new exoplanets orbiting a sun-like star just over 200 light-years from Earth. Because of the diversity of these planets and brightness of their star, this system could be an ideal target for atmospheric characterization with NASA's upcoming James Webb Space Telescope. Tansu Daylan, a postdoc at the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, led Dalian coherent light source reveals the origin of interstellar medium S2 fragments
Thursday, 28 January 2021 06:43
Studying the creation and evolution of sulfur-containing compounds in outer space is essential for understanding interstellar chemistry. CS2 is believed to be the most important molecule in comet nuclei, interstellar dust, or ice cores. CS and S2 are the photodissociation fragments of CS2.
Forty years ago, the emission spectra of only CS and S2 species, and not those of CS2 species, were o Harnessing the power of AI to understand warm dense matter
Thursday, 28 January 2021 06:43
The study of warm dense matter helps us understand what is going on inside giant planets, brown dwarfs, and neutron stars. However, this state of matter, which exhibits properties of both solids and plasmas, does not occur naturally on Earth. It can be produced artificially in the lab using large X-ray experiments, albeit only at a small scale and for short periods of time.
Theoretical and New concept for rocket thruster exploits the mechanism behind solar flares
Thursday, 28 January 2021 06:43
A new type of rocket thruster that could take humankind to Mars and beyond has been proposed by a physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. The device would apply magnetic fields to cause particles of plasma, electrically charged gas also known as the fourth state of matter, to shoot out the back of a rocket and, because of the conservation of moment Swedish Space Corporation opens Thailand branch
Thursday, 28 January 2021 06:43
Swedish Space Corporation has announced the formation of SSC Space Thailand, a subsidiary targeted at the Asian-Pacific market, further expanding the company's presence in the region.
The announcement marks further investment in the Asian-Pacific region, adding to SSC's already strong presence in Australia and Thailand, including ground station facilities in both countries.
"SSC has Simulating space at ESA's Materials and Electrical Components Laboratory
Thursday, 28 January 2021 06:43
While most ESA personnel work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, essential activities continue to take place on site across Agency establishments while following social distancing protocols.
In ESA's Materials and Electrical Components Laboratory -one of a suite of labs based at the ESTEC technical centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands -testing has continued on critical elements for se Low-cost high resolution nighttime light data
Thursday, 28 January 2021 06:43
New Light Technologies Inc. (NLT) is partnering with Alba Orbital to provide agencies in and outside of the US with innovative solutions that utilize the first available low-cost, high-resolution satellite nighttime light data.
Alba Orbital, headquartered in Scotland, has developed a unique PocketQube Satellite platform developed in partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA). The pla Dickinson’s guidance to space troops: Prepare for ’competitive and dangerous’ environment
Wednesday, 27 January 2021 21:38
WASHINGTON — The commander of U.S. Space Command warns in a new document that keeping satellites safe from hostile attack will require a coordinated response involving all elements of the U.S. military and allies.
Glavkosmos to sell seats on Soyuz missions
Wednesday, 27 January 2021 20:46
DOUGLAS, U.K. — Glavkosmos, the commercial arm of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, has announced its intent to enter the space tourism market, selling a minimum of four Soyuz seats to commercial astronauts through 2023.
Roscosmos has previously sold such seats through a long-standing relationship with American company Space Adventures.
35 years since Challenger launch disaster: 'Never forgotten'
Wednesday, 27 January 2021 20:32
NASA leaders, retired launch directors, families of fallen astronauts and space fans marked the 35th anniversary of the Challenger disaster on Thursday, vowing never to forget the seven who died during liftoff.
Thick lithosphere casts doubt on plate tectonics in Venus's geologically recent past
Wednesday, 27 January 2021 19:40
At some point between 300 million and 1 billion years ago, a large cosmic object smashed into the planet Venus, leaving a crater more than 170 miles in diameter. A team of Brown University researchers has used that ancient impact scar to explore the possibility that Venus once had Earth-like plate tectonics.
For a study published in Nature Astronomy, the researchers used computer models to recreate the impact that carved out Mead crater, Venus's largest impact basin. Mead is surrounded by two clifflike faults—rocky ripples frozen in time after the basin-forming impact. The models showed that for those rings to be where they are in relation to the central crater, Venus's lithosphere—its rocky outer shell—must have been quite thick, far thicker than that of Earth.
Thousands more satellites will soon orbit Earth—we need better rules to prevent space crashes
Wednesday, 27 January 2021 16:10
In recent years, satellites have become smaller, cheaper, and easier to make with commercial off the shelf parts. Some even weigh as little as one gram. This means more people can afford to send them into orbit. Now, satellite operators have started launching mega-constellations—groups of hundreds or even thousands of small satellites working together—into orbit around Earth.
Instead of one large satellite, groups of small satellites can provide coverage of the entire planet at once. Civil, military and private operators are increasingly using constellations to create global and continuous coverage of the Earth. Constellations can provide a variety of functions, including climate monitoring, disaster management or digital connectivity, like satellite broadband.
But to provide coverage of the entire planet with small satellites requires a lot of them. On top of this, they have to orbit close to Earth's surface to reduce interruption of coverage and communication delays. This means they take up an already busy area of space called low Earth orbit, the space 100 to 2,000km above the Earth's surface.
What did the solar system look like before all the planets migrated?
Wednesday, 27 January 2021 15:16
Early planetary migration in the solar system has been long established, and there are myriad theories that have been put forward to explain where the planets were coming from. Theories such as the Grand Tack Hypothesis an the Nice Model show how important that migration is to the current state of our solar system. Now, a team from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has come up with a novel way of trying to understand planetary migration patterns: by looking at meteorite compositions.
The researchers, led by postdoc Jan Render, had three key realizations. First, that almost all the meteorites that have fallen to Earth originated from the asteroid belt. Second, that the asteroid belt is known to have formed by sweeping material up from all over the solar system. And third, and perhaps most importantly, that they could analyze the isotopic signatures in meteorites to help determine where a given asteroid had formed in the solar system.
With that knowledge, they could then extrapolate out to other asteroids of the same type. There are approximately 100 different types of asteroids, with different isotopic signatures, in the asteroid belt.
ExoMars orbiter's 20000th image
Wednesday, 27 January 2021 14:00
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ExoMars orbiter's 20000th image 
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Simulating space