Washington DC (UPI) Apr 19, 2023
SpaceX will again attempt to launch the first test flight of its fully integrated Super Heavy booster and Starship rocket on Thursday. The launch from SpaceX Starbase in Texas is slated for no sooner than Thursday, with a 62-minute launch window beginning at 8:28 a.m. CST. The test flight is highly anticipated because it represents a crucial step toward sending a manned mission b

Making use of the very first resources of another world would be a major feat for our species, bringing us closer to living in space to stay. But reaching such a milestone will take sustained inventiveness and effort – so ESA invites your ideas to help make it happen.

A report, publishing today, states that ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica has increased fivefold since the 1990s, and now accounts for a quarter of sea-level rise.

Westminster CO (SPX) Apr 20, 2023
Maxar Technologies (NYSE: MAXR) (TSX: MAXR), provider of comprehensive space solutions and secure, precise, geospatial intelligence, received an order for a direct broadcast satellite from DISH, designated ES XXV. This geostationary (GEO) communications satellite will be operated by DISH and deliver content across North America. ES XXV will be built on the proven Maxar 1300 series platform

London, UK (SPX) Apr 20, 2023
Lunar exploration is undergoing a renaissance. Dozens of missions, organised by multiple space agencies - and increasingly by commercial companies - are set to visit the Moon by the end of this decade. Most of these will involve small robotic spacecraft, but NASA's ambitious Artemis programme, aims to return humans to the lunar surface by the middle of the decade. There are various reasons

Gottingen, Germany (SPX) Apr 20, 2023
Stars that contain comparatively large amounts of heavy elements provide less favourable conditions for the emergence of complex life than metal-poor stars, as scientists from the Max Planck Institutes for Solar System Research and for Chemistry as well as from the University of Gottingen have now found. The team showed how the metallicity of a star is connected to the ability of its planets to

Greenbelt MD (SPX) Apr 20, 2023
A vital subsystem for NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope was recently delivered to Ball Aerospace in Boulder, Colorado, and installed in the spacecraft's Wide Field Instrument (WFI). Called the Simplified Relative Calibration System (sRCS), this component will allow astronomers to measure the total light output of cosmic objects like galaxies and supernovae with extreme accuracy. When Roma

Paris (ESA) Apr 20, 2023
Now in its fifth year in space, NASA's TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) remains a rousing success. TESS's cameras have mapped more than 93% of the entire sky, discovered 329 new worlds and thousands more candidates, and provided new insights into a wide array of cosmic phenomena, from stellar pulsations and exploding stars to supermassive black holes. Using its four cameras, TE

Pasadena CA (JPL) Apr 20, 2023
Curiosity is carefully and patiently driving up a local canyon, named Marker Band valley, across a variably tilting surface that is scattered with horizontally banded bedrock and patches of sand. Can you imagine how fun and challenging it would be to scramble up the pass over this bumpy, uneven, and sandy terrain? As the rover continues her ascent up Marker Band valley, the rocks continue

Pasadena CA (JPL) Apr 20, 2023
To quote our project scientist, Ashwin, it was clear when we assessed our downlink that Curiosity had almost literally taken "two steps forward and one steps back" during the drive in our previous plan. It has been tricky for our intrepid Mars explorer as we have tried to pick our way through this small canyon as we exit marker band valley. There are abundant large blocks that we are tryin