Image: The Zero Debris Charter

Midland TX (SPX) Jun 22, 2023
AST SpaceMobile (NASDAQ: ASTS), the company building the first and only space-based cellular broadband network accessible directly by standard mobile phones, announced it has achieved repeated successful download speeds above 10 Mbps during testing of BlueWalker 3. Space-based cellular communications at 4G speeds using unmodified smartphones is another world first telecommunications achievement

Washington DC (SPX) Jun 22, 2023
Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, is far less luminous than other black holes at the centers of galaxies we can observe, which means our galaxy's central black hole has not been actively gobbling up material around it. Yet new evidence from NASA's IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) telescope suggests the ancient sleeping giant woke recently

Washington DC (SPX) Jun 22, 2023
Last year, scientists drove up Mauna Loa volcano on Hawai'i, aimed a laser at a reflector positioned on Haleakala peak on Maui, and beamed rapid pulses of laser light through 150 kilometers of turbulent air. While the pulses were exceedingly faint, they demonstrated a capability long sought by physicists: transmitting extremely precise time signals through the air between far-flung locations at

Newcastle upon Tyne UK (SPX) Jun 22, 2023
A North East planetary astronomer has been granted rare access to the world's largest deep-space telescope, providing him with a unique opportunity to discover more about the largest planet in our solar system - Jupiter. Launched in December 2021, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) uses infrared radiation to look deep into space, meaning it can observe the first stars and even the fo

Washington DC (UPI) Jun 21, 2023
Ecuador became the 26th nation to join the Artemis Accords Wednesday. The accords "establish a practical set of principles to guide space exploration cooperation among nations, including those participating in NASA's Artemis program," according to NASA. NASA says the Artemis Accords reinforce prior agreements regarding space exploration. "The Artemis Accords reinforce and

Gainesville FL (SPX) Jun 22, 2023
Sampling Martian rocks requires persistence! Right now, Perseverance is on the hunt for a conglomerate rock to sample for return to Earth - a task that is proving to be challenging. Two attempts were made to core at the Onahu outcrop, but the soft rock crumbled during each attempt. The team set sights on a neighboring outcrop called Stone Man Pass, about 40 meters away, to search for a les

Pasadena CA (JPL) Jun 22, 2023
Earth planning date: Tuesday, June 20, 2023. Curiosity is currently trekking east along a small detour due to recent challenges on steep, rocky, sandy terrain. Today we planned 1 sol known as a 'Touch and Go': Curiosity spends a short time collecting science data including contact science activities, and then drives away on the same sol. These are useful plans when you have places to be, but don

Paris (ESA) Jun 22, 2023
The final two crewmembers of Crew-7, for which ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen is the pilot, have been announced. They will fly to the International Space Station (ISS) later this summer. In addition to Andreas and NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli who were already announced as Crew-7 pilots, Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa and Roscosmos astronaut Konstantin Borisov will take two seats in

Kennedy Space Center FL (SPX) Jun 22, 2023
As teams with NASA's Exploration Ground Systems Program at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida prepare for the first major set of integrated ground system tests for Artemis II, the first crewed mission under Artemis, engineers have nearly completed upgrades to mobile launcher 1 and launch pad 39B. Technicians repaired the elevators on the mobile launcher, which sustained damage du