Berkeley CA (SPX) Oct 20, 2022
In Star Trek, the Borg are a ruthless, hive-minded collective that assimilate other beings with the intent of taking over the galaxy. Here on nonfictional planet Earth, Borgs are DNA packages that could help humans fight climate change. Last year, a team led by Jill Banfield discovered DNA structures within a methane-consuming microbe called Methanoperedens that appear to supercharge the o

Paris (ESA) Oct 21, 2022
ESA's Navigation Directorate is planning a new satellite whose results will enable the generation of an updated global model of Earth - the International Terrestrial Reference Frame, employed for everything from land surveying to measuring sea level rise - with an accuracy down to 1 mm, while tracking ground motion of just 0.1 mm per year. This improvement, at a stroke, will have a major impact

Kiruna, Sweden (SPX) Oct 24, 2022
On 21 October 2022 at 09:25, the MAPHEUS 12 research rocket of the German Aerospace Center took off from the Esrange Space Center near Kiruna in northern Sweden. It reached an altitude of 260 kilometres before descending back to Earth on a parachute. On board for the first time were nerve cells. The goal is to understand how their electrical signals deviate in microgravity. The research te

Washington DC (UPI) Oct 19, 2021
SpaceX announced that its satellite internet service Starlink will be available on select airplanes beginning next year. Starlink Aviation will offer Internet speeds of up to 350 Mbps to each plane that is equipped with its Aero Terminal, which it says is fast enough for video calls, online gaming, "and other high data rate activities." "With Starlink, passengers will be able to

Boston MA (SPX) Oct 20, 2022
Astrophysicists have performed a powerful new analysis that places the most precise limits yet on the composition and evolution of the universe. With this analysis, dubbed Pantheon+, cosmologists find themselves at a crossroads. Pantheon+ convincingly finds that the cosmos is composed of about two-thirds dark energy and one-third matter - mostly in the form of dark matter - and is expanding at a

Blacksburg VA (SPX) Oct 24, 2022
In 1980's popular book "Cosmos," Carl Sagan wrote of what makes us: "All the elements of the Earth except hydrogen and some helium have been cooked by a kind of stellar alchemy billions of years ago in stars, some of which are today inconspicuous white dwarfs on the other side of the Milky Way Galaxy. The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our app

Washington DC (SPX) Oct 24, 2022
A gas giant exoplanet with the density of a marshmallow has been detected in orbit around a cool red dwarf star by a suite of instruments, including the NASA-funded NEID radial-velocity instrument on the WIYN 3.5-meter Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory, a Program of NSF's NOIRLab. The planet, named TOI-3757 b, is the fluffiest gas giant planet ever discovered around this type of star.

Riverside CA (SPX) Oct 24, 2022
An Earth-like planet orbiting an M dwarf - the most common type of star in the universe - appears to have no atmosphere at all. This discovery could cause a major shift in the search for life on other planets. Because M-dwarfs are so ubiquitous, this discovery means a large number of planets orbiting these stars may also lack atmospheres and therefore are unlikely to harbor living things.

Pasadena CA (JPL) Oct 25, 2022
We continue our drive through "Marker Band valley", an area of high interest scientifically, due to strong evidence of sulfates from orbital mapping. In this area, the sulfates are typically magnesium rich (think Epsom salts!), with less evidence for the more common calcium rich sulfates we have been traversing across for over ten years. We found some lovely bedrock in our workspace this m

Gold Coast, Australia (SPX) Oct 25, 2022
Australian rocket and satellite builder, Gilmour Space Technologies, is offering a new rideshare mission into Low Earth Orbit - this time, on one of its G-class satellite buses (or G-Sat) scheduled to be launched in late 2024. "We're calling this our Kangaroo-1 mission, and it will be capable of carrying 125U (or 125 units) of payload volume into a mid-inclination orbit," said Shaun Kenyon