After an asteroid encounter, scientists scrambled to minimize the loss of space rocks as the craft belched rubble
A Nasa spacecraft is stuffed with so much asteroid rubble from this week’s grab that it’s jammed open and precious particles are drifting away in space, scientists said on Friday.
Related: Nasa Osiris-Rex spacecraft lands on asteroid Bennu in mission to collect dust
Continue reading...Spacecraft ‘kissed the surface’ in brief landing on asteroid 200m miles away from Earth in US-first mission
A Nasa spacecraft has successfully landed on an asteroid, dodging boulders the size of buildings, in order to collect a handful of cosmic rubble for analysis back on Earth.
The space agency team behind the Osiris-Rex project said preliminary data showed the sample collection went as planned and that the spacecraft had lifted off the surface of asteroid Bennu.
Continue reading...Move is part of US space agency’s plan to establish a long-term human presence on the moon by 2030
With competition among Earth’s telecoms providers as fierce as ever, equipment maker Nokia has announced its expansion into a new market, winning a deal to install the first cellular network on the moon.
The Finnish equipment manufacturer said it was selected by Nasa to deploy an “ultra-compact, low-power, space-hardened” wireless 4G network on the lunar surface, as part of the US space agency’s plan to establish a long-term human presence on the moon by 2030.
Continue reading...The Mhoine peninsula in Sutherland will house one of UK’s first sites of its kind if it wins approval
In two years, thousands of tourists and space enthusiasts could be gathering in the far north of Scotland to watch an unlikely event, the inaugural flight of a rocket blasting off from a peat bog usually grazed by deer and sheep.
The Mhoine peninsula in Sutherland, a desolate stretch of peatland punctuated by mires and tiny lochs overlooking the Pentland Firth, has been chosen as the site of one of the UK’s first spaceports – provided it eventually wins approval from the Civil Aviation Authority.
Continue reading...Roger Penrose says win, shared with Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez, ‘is in some ways a distraction’
Three scientists have won the 2020 Nobel prize in physics for their work on black hole formation and the discovery of a supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy.
Sir Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez together scooped the 114th Nobel prize in physics.
Continue reading...Nasa officials stress that the leak on ISS remains small and poses no danger but will send extra air supply on the next delivery
A small air leak at the International Space Station finally has been traced to the Russian side, following a middle-of-the-night search by astronauts.
Nasa said on Tuesday that the two Russians and one American on board were awakened late Monday to hurriedly seal hatches between compartments and search for the ongoing leak, which appeared to be getting worse. It was the third time in just over a month that the crew had to isolate themselves on the Russian side, in an attempt to find the growing leak.
Continue reading...Italian scientists provide further evidence of underground lake and smaller bodies of water in study
A network of salty ponds may be gurgling beneath Mars’ south pole alongside a large underground lake, raising the prospect of tiny, swimming Martian life.
Italian scientists reported their findings Monday, two years after identifying what they believed to be a large buried lake. They widened their coverage area by a couple hundred miles, using even more data from a radar sounder on the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter.
Continue reading...While the discovery of the normally microbe-produced phosphine on our toxic neighbour is astonishing, other candidates for life are more promising
It remains one of the most unexpected scientific discoveries of the year. To their astonishment, British scientists last week revealed they had uncovered strong evidence that phosphine – a toxic, rancid gas produced by microbes – exists in the burning, acid-drenched atmosphere of Venus.
Continue reading...Phosphine, released by microbes in oxygen-starved environments, was present in quantities larger than expected
Traces of a pungent gas that waft through the clouds of Venus may be emanations from aerial organisms – microbial life, but not as we know it.
Astronomers detected phosphine 30 miles up in the planet’s atmosphere and have failed to identify a process other than life that could account for its presence.
Continue reading...Miniature satellites open up a world of technological possibility. But experts say they degrade the astronomical landscape
The natural serenity of the night sky is a touchstone for all of us. Everyone alive today looks at the same stars no matter where they are located on the planet. But the connection is more profound because, next to our brief lives, the stars are immortal. Shakespeare saw the same stars in the same patterns that we do. So did Galileo, Columbus, Joan of Arc, Cleopatra and the first human ancestor to look up in curiosity. The night sky is nothing short of our common human heritage.
Last year, however, something happened that might change that view for ever. On 23 May 2019, Elon Musk’s company SpaceX launched 60 small satellites from a single rocket. The satellites were the first in what is planned to be a “megaconstellation” of thousands of satellites that will bring internet coverage to the entire planet.
Continue reading...The agency announced it is buying lunar soil from a commercial provider as part of a technology development program
Nasa has announced it is looking for private companies to go to the moon and collect dust and rocks from the surface and bring them back to Earth.
The American space agency would then buy the moon samples in amounts between 50 to 500 grams for between $15,000 to $25,000.
Continue reading...Several missions this year are seeking out life on the red planet. But would we recognise extraterrestrials if we found them?
In July, three unmanned missions blasted off to Mars – from China (Tianwen-1), the US (Nasa’s Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover) and the United Arab Emirates (Hope). The Chinese and American missions have lander craft that will seek signs of current or past life on Mars. Nasa is also planning to send its Europa Clipper probe to survey Jupiter’s moon Europa, and the robotic lander Dragonfly to Saturn’s moon Titan. Both moons are widely thought to be promising hunting grounds for life in our solar system – as are the underground oceans of Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus.
Meanwhile, we can now glimpse the chemical makeup of atmospheres of planets that orbit other stars (exoplanets), of which more than 4,000 are now known. Some hope these studies might disclose possible signatures of life.
Continue reading...Researchers believe noise was two black holes colliding around 7 billion years ago, creating a previously unseen class of stellar object
Scientists have announced the detection of a signal from a long-ago collision between two black holes that created a new one of a size never seen before.
“It’s the biggest bang since the big bang observed by humanity,” said Caltech professor of physics Alan Weinstein, who was part of the discovery team.
Continue reading...Dwarf planet, believed to be a barren space rock, has an ‘extensive reservoir’ of brine beneath its surface, images show
The dwarf planet Ceres – long believed to be a barren space rock – is an ocean world with reservoirs of sea water beneath its surface, the results of a major exploration mission showed on Monday.
Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and has its own gravity, enabling the Nasa Dawn spacecraft to capture high-resolution images of its surface.
Continue reading...Space agency says ‘certain cosmic nicknames are insensitive’ and vows to drop any reference to them
Nasa has signaled it is joining the social justice movement by changing unofficial and potentially contentious names used by the scientific community for distant cosmic objects and systems such as planets, galaxies and nebulae.
In a statement last week, the space agency said that as the “community works to identify and address systemic discrimination and inequality in all aspects of the field, it has become clear that certain cosmic nicknames are not only insensitive, but can be actively harmful”.
Continue reading...Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley land off Florida after two-month voyage that was Nasa’s first crewed mission from home in nine years
US astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley, who flew to the International Space Station in SpaceX’s new Crew Dragon, splashed down in the capsule in the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday after a two-month voyage that was Nasa’s first crewed mission from home soil in nine years.
Behnken and Hurley left the station on Saturday and returned home to land in the waves off Florida’s Pensacola coast on schedule at 2.48pm ET following a 21-hour overnight journey aboard Crew Dragon “Endeavor.”
Continue reading...Perseverance mission aims to land on crater to search for possible microbial Martians
Nasa’s most sophisticated rover yet is due to blast off for Mars on a mission to answer one of the most profound questions: did life ever emerge on another planet?
Mission controllers have set their sights on the 28-mile-wide (45km) Jezero crater north of the planet’s equator. The landing site is one of the most promising spots for any microbial Martians to have been preserved in rock formed when the crater held a lake nine times larger than Loch Ness.
Continue reading...‘Provocative test of a weapon-like projectile’ from Russian satellite shows peaceful use of space is under threat, says defence secretary
Britain will boost its ability to handle threats posed by Russia and China in space as part of a foreign, security and defence policy review, the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, has said.
“This week we have been reminded of the threat Russia poses to our national security with the provocative test of a weapon-like projectile from a satellite threatening the peaceful use of space,” Wallace wrote in the Sunday Telegraph, adding that China also posed a threat.
Continue reading...US and Russian officials will meet in Vienna on Monday to discuss whether and how to regulate the militarisation of space, in the wake of an alleged Russian satellite-launched missile test.
The two governments agreed to hold a “space security exchange” in January, but the meeting was put off as a result of the pandemic.
Continue reading...Launch of projectile from satellite into orbit ‘threatens the peaceful use of space’
The US and UK have accused Russia of testing an anti-satellite weapon in space, in the latest sign that a space-based arms race is heating up.
General John Raymond, the head of the new US Space Force, said the alleged test of a projectile, conducted on 15 July, was “further evidence of Russia’s continuing efforts to develop and test space-based systems, and consistent with the Kremlin’s published military doctrine to employ weapons that hold US and allied space assets at risk.”
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