The White House has decided it’s time to do something about space junk. On Friday, the National Science and Technology Council released a 44-point national orbital debris implementation plan that aims to nip the littering problem in the bud before it threatens the safe operation of satellites in orbit. Multiple US agencies are currently involved […]
There’s been a changing of the robotic guard responsible for bringing samples of Mars rocks back to Earth. Perseverance and a pair of Ingenuity-esque helicopters will now play a greater role in ferrying the samples back home. Mars sample return: NASA and ESA have together hatched a plan to bring samples of Mars rock back […]
The in-space collaboration between the US and Russia may be coming to an end. Yesterday, newly installed Roscosmos chief Yuri Borisov announced Moscow’s intention to walk away from the ISS partnership in 2024 and commence construction on its own space station. In recent memory… Russia’s hostile invasion of Ukraine almost immediately sent the already-strained ISS […]
Yesterday, Eutelsat confirmed Bloomberg reporting that it is officially in talks to merge with OneWeb. Refresher: OneWeb is building a LEO broadband megaconstellation to rival the likes of Starlink and Kuiper. The UK company has launched 428 satellites (~66% of its planned constellation). France’s Eutelsat, founded in 1977, operates a fleet of 36 GEO satellites […]
China’s space station is almost finished. Over the weekend, the China Manned Space Agency launched the Wentian laboratory module to its in-progress Tiangong station atop a Long March 5B. Wentian successfully docked with the station earlier this morning after a 13-hour journey. Wentian: The lab module is the largest spacecraft that China has ever sent […]
Until recently, the driving philosophy in exoplanet research was that liquid water needed fairly specific conditions to exist and that water on planets that orbited too far from a star would necessarily be frozen. Now, a decade-old theory with a new batch of research behind it is challenging that idea among planetary scientists. A study […]
The wait is almost over. Yesterday NASA finally announced a target launch date for the debut flight of SLS, aka Artemis I. The agency’s giant moon rocket is set to roll out to the pad on Aug. 18 and could launch on either Aug. 29, Sep. 2, or Sep. 5. The story so far: It’s […]
As NASA prepares to send humans back to the moon through its long-awaited Artemis program, it’s taking big steps to encourage commercial lander development. First order of business: CLPS. NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program is funding 14 separate lander concepts from Astrobotic, Deep Space Systems, Draper Labs, Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines, Lockheed Martin, […]
The United Arab Emirates is getting serious about space. On Sunday, the Emirati space agency announced the creation of an AED 3 billion (~$817M) national fund to further nurture and develop the UAE’s budding space industry. The UAE also announced the first project with backing from its new fund: a constellation of SAR (synthetic aperture […]
Euroconsult has released its 8th report on the small satellite market. The TL;DR–the smallsat industry has big things in the works over the next decade. A boom in smallsat upmass The market intelligence firm’s analysis found that ~18,500 satellites weighing <500kg are likely to reach orbit by 2031. That adds up to ~365 tons per […]
A new age of astronomy has officially dawned. After a long, nail-biting wait, NASA has finally released the first full-color images from JWST, the next-generation space telescope allowing scientists to peer deeper into space than ever before. Astronomers across the world have pinned their hopes on the shiny new scope, aiming to glean precious understanding […]
Astronauts in microgravity are losing weight in all the wrong places. A recent study in Scientific Reports found that astronauts who spent months in space returned with major losses in bone density, which wasn’t always immediately or fully restored. Funded by the Canadian Space Agency, researchers followed 17 American, European, Canadian, and Japanese astronauts before, […]
