Copernical Team
NASA makes asteroid defense a priority, moving its NEO surveyor mission into the development phase
There's an old adage in the engineering field—what gets funded gets built. So it's sure to be a happy time over at the Planetary Society, as NEO Surveyor, the project the organization has primarily supported over the past few years, has made it through NASA's grueling budgetary process to reach the "development" stage, with an eye for a launch of the system in 2028.
NEO Surveyor is, as the name implies, a satellite specifically designed to survey for objects near the Earth (NEO). One of its primary contributions will be to look for asteroids and other small bodies that are potentially on an eventual collision course with Earth but are invisible to typical NEO survey missions because of their location in the solar system.
Typically, their signals are just background noise against the overwhelming signal from the sun. But NEO Surveyor will be able to detect individual asteroid heat signatures, allowing it to isolate potentially dangerous asteroids using this novel technique.
Five space exploration missions to look out for in 2023
It's been an eventful year for space exploration, with successes including the completion of Nasa's Artemis 1 mission (finally), the inauguration of the James Webb Space Telescope, and the completion of China's Tiangong space station.
2023 is set to be another busy year. Here are five of the most exciting missions to watch out for.
1. Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer
In April, the European Space Agency (ESA) is set to launch the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice), in what will be Europe's first dedicated robotic mission to Jupiter. Juice is due to reach the planet in July 2031 after performing an incredible flight path through the solar system. The mission will enter into orbit around Jupiter and perform numerous flybys of its large icy moons: Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.
After four years of moon flybys, Juice will then enter into orbit around Ganymede, the largest moon in the solar system—becoming the first spacecraft ever to reach orbit around the moon of another planet.
How magnetic waves interact with Earth's bubble
A new study involving UCL has uncovered how magnetic waves are transmitted past a standing shock wave, known as the bow shock, that forms ahead of Earth as a result of the solar wind hitting our magnetic bubble (magnetosphere).
Shock waves occur in air when a plane travels faster than the speed of sound and also occur in plasma (a fourth state of matter that makes up 99% of the visible Uni IXPE quickly observes aftermath of exceptional cosmic blast
On Oct. 9, 2022, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory detected a high-energy blast of light from deep space. The light came from a powerful explosion called a gamma-ray burst dubbed GRB 221009A that ranks among the most luminous known. Scientists around the world trained their telescopes on the aftermath.
Michela Negro, a postdoctoral research assistant MOXIE sets consecutive personal bests and Mars records for oxygen production
Perseverance has a unique device near its heart that inhales Mars' atmosphere and exhales pure oxygen. This device is named MOXIE, the Mars Oxygen In Situ Resource Utilization Experiment.
The toaster-sized MOXIE uses a high-temperature, electrochemical process called solid oxide electrolysis to strip oxygen ions from the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Mars. There are two little gas ex The 10 Days of Christmas: Sols 3689-3698
On the first sol of Christmas, Curiosity will bring to us; one APXS analysis, one ChemCam analysis and a multitude of Mastcam, MAHLI and RMI images! On the second sol of Christmas, Curiosity will bring to us; more ChemCam RMI images, more Mastcam images, more Navcam images and drive to a new, exciting location.
To allow for the MSL science team and engineers to take some time off over the Martian winter wonderland across Ultimi Scopuli
Christmas and winter spirit - also on Mars. Impact craters connected by a striped, coloured ribbon can be seen in the final and very wintry HRSC Mars image of this year. We wish all readers of our martian image series, published together with the European Space Agency (ESA) and Freie Universitat Berlin, happy holidays!
Image data from the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA's Inauguration of mainland Europe's first satellite launch complex
On 13 January 2023, the Swedish head of state, King Carl XVI Gustaf, together with European and Swedish political dignitaries will visit Esrange Space Center in northern Sweden to cut the ribbon of a new spaceport that will significantly reshape the European space landscape. After years of preparation and construction, European mainland's first orbital launch complex, Spaceport Esrange, will be Virgin Orbit' Launcherone Systems given green light for upcoming mission
The U.K. Civil Aviation Authority has issued launch and range control licenses to Virgin Orbit (Nasdaq: VORB) to undertake the first satellite launch from UK soil. The granting of these licenses represents a major step forward for the historic Start Me Up mission, and reflects the CAA's concurrence that all reasonable steps have been taken by Virgin Orbit to ensure the desired safety, security, Three time dimensions, one space dimension
How would our world be viewed by observers moving faster than light in a vacuum? Such a picture would be clearly different from what we encounter every day. We should expect to see not only phenomena that happen spontaneously, without a deterministic cause, but also particles traveling simultaneously along multiple paths - argue theorists from universities in Warsaw and Oxford.
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