ComPair gamma-ray hunting mission prepares for balloon flight
Sunday, 23 July 2023 05:11
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Engineers and scientists have shipped NASA's ComPair instrument to Fort Sumner, New Mexico, ahead of its scheduled August flight early in NASA's 2023 fall balloon campaign.
ComPair's goal is to test new technologies for studying gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light. It was assembled and tested at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
"The gamma-ray energy Chemical cartography reveals the Milky Way's spiral arms
Sunday, 23 July 2023 05:11 Write a comment
Keith Hawkins, assistant professor of astronomy at The University of Texas at Austin, has used chemical cartography - also known as chemical mapping - to identify regions of the Milky Way's spiral arms that have previously gone undetected. His research, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, demonstrates the value of this pioneering technique in understanding the sha Detecting threats beyond the limits of human, sensor sight
Sunday, 23 July 2023 05:11 Write a comment
Remember what it's like to twirl a sparkler on a summer night? Hold it still and the fire crackles and sparks but twirl it around and the light blurs into a line tracing each whirl and jag you make.
A new patented software system developed at Sandia National Laboratories can find the curves of motion in streaming video and images from satellites, drones and far-range security cameras and t NASA offers details on commercial space capabilities agreements
Saturday, 22 July 2023 18:41 Write a comment
A NASA procurement document provides details about the plans of several companies that received unfunded Space Act Agreements for commercial space capabilities in June, as well as those who failed to make the cut.
Galactic Energy registers sixth consecutive successful launch
Saturday, 22 July 2023 09:24 Write a comment
Chinese startup Galactic Energy sent two satellites into orbit early Saturday with the company’s sixth consecutive successful launch.
Amazon picks Kennedy Space Center for Project Kuiper processing facility
Friday, 21 July 2023 19:46 Write a comment
Amazon announced plans July 21 to build a satellite processing facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Florida, as it prepares to start launching 3,200 commercial Project Kuiper broadband satellites next year.
In new space race, scientists propose geoarchaeology can aid in preserving space heritage
Friday, 21 July 2023 15:58 Write a comment
As a new space race heats up, two researchers from the Kansas Geological Survey at the University of Kansas and their colleagues have proposed a new scientific subfield: planetary geoarchaeology, the study of how cultural and natural processes on Earth's moon, on Mars and across the solar system may be altering, preserving or destroying the material record of space exploration.
"Until recently, we might consider the material left behind during the space race of the mid-20th century as relatively safe," said Justin Holcomb, postdoctoral researcher at the Kansas Geological Survey, based at the University of Kansas, and lead author on a new paper introducing the concept of planetary geoarchaeology in the journal Geoarchaeology.
"However, the material record that currently exists on the moon is rapidly becoming at risk of being destroyed if proper attention isn't paid during the new space era."
Since the advent of space exploration, humans have launched more than 6,700 satellites and spacecraft from countries around the globe, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.
First Astranis satellite sidelined by post-deployment glitch
Friday, 21 July 2023 13:01 Write a comment
The first Astranis-built satellite won’t be able to provide commercial broadband over Alaska for local telco Pacific Dataport because it can’t keep solar arrays pointed at the sun, the Californian manufacturer’s CEO John Gedmark said July 20.
Week in images: 17-21 July 2023
Friday, 21 July 2023 12:05 Write a comment
Week in images: 17-21 July 2023
Discover our week through the lens
Journey back to Earth: Aeolus' historic reentry
Friday, 21 July 2023 12:00 Write a comment
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ESA’s wind mission Aeolus is coming home. After five years of improving weather forecasts, the satellite will return in a first-of-its-kind assisted reentry. At ESA’s Space Operations Centre in Germany, mission control will use the satellite’s remaining fuel to steer Aeolus during its return to Earth.
Find out more about the mission, its successes and how Aeolus is paving the way for safe reentries.
Rescue drones tested within Italian volcanoes
Friday, 21 July 2023 11:28 Write a comment
Interconnected drones have been dispatched into volcanic territory to test their use for civil protection, to help guide responses to natural disasters using novel PNT technology. The project, named Pathfinder, is supported through ESA’s Navigation Innovation and Support Programme, NAVISP. Two test campaigns have been undertaken to date, around the active Stromboli Island volcano and within the Astroni Nature Reserve, in a volcanic crater near Naples.
Life on Earth didn't arise as described in textbooks
Friday, 21 July 2023 10:56 Write a comment
No, oxygen didn't catalyze the swift blossoming of Earth's first multicellular organisms. The result defies a 70-year-old assumption about what caused an explosion of oceanic fauna hundreds of millions of years ago.
Between 685 and 800 million years ago, multicellular organisms began to appear in all of Earth's oceans during what's known as the Avalon explosion, a forerunner era of the mor On space, poll shows most Americans support NASA's role, U.S. presence
Friday, 21 July 2023 10:56 Write a comment
New polling data released by the Pew Research Center indicates that Americans want the nation to maintain a continued presence in space.
A sample group of 10,329 U.S. adults was surveyed between May 30 and June 4.
About seven in 10 respondents said America's role in space was essential, while 30% said it was not.
The survey indicates that 47% of Americans have done at leas Asteroid-smashing NASA probe sent boulders into space
Friday, 21 July 2023 10:56 Write a comment
When a NASA spacecraft successfully knocked an asteroid off course last year it sent dozens of boulders skittering into space, images from the Hubble telescope showed on Thursday.
NASA's fridge-sized DART probe smashed into the pyramid-sized, rugby ball-shaped asteroid Dimorphos roughly 11 million kilometres (6.8 million miles) from Earth in September last year.
The spacecraft knocked th MSU studies nutrients that may have fertilized ancient photosynthesis in Earth's oceans
Friday, 21 July 2023 10:56 Write a comment
The Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and, during that time, it has seen some things. Life has been a part of most of that history, but what life has looked like has changed dramatically over the eons.
Deciphering how life worked on this planet during its different epochs is one of the things that Dalton Hardisty works on at Michigan State University.
In fact, he's part of an internati