Space & Time

European officials say the Vega C rocket is ready for its return to flight next week despite a technical issue that will delay the launch of an Earth science satellite by at least a day. The post Vega C return to flight slips a day appeared first on SpaceNews.

Astronomers are closer than ever to working out how the biggest galaxies in the cosmos grew so quickly before dying.

This Thanksgiving, solar storms may produce faint auroras across the northern rim of the United States.

Much of the mass in the universe lies not in stars or galaxies, but in the space between them, known as the intergalactic medium. It is warm and even hot, and is called the “warm-hot intergalactic medium,” or WHIM. It holds about 50% of the normal mass (viz. baryonic, not including dark matter) of the universe but with a density of hydrogen ions less than 100 per cubic meter.

Video: 00:56:21 Watch the replay of the Sentinel-1C pre-launch media briefing for detailed information on the mission which will be launched aboard a Vega-C rocket no earlier than 4 December at 18:20 local time (22:20 CET) from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

GPS threats are increasing at a record rate. Escalating conflicts around the world are undermining GPS reliability as a surge of interference attacks continues to impact vast areas of Europe The post The urgent need for a national GPS jamming detection system appeared first on SpaceNews.

An international team of astronomers has employed the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to observe a supermassive Galactic open cluster known as Westerlund 1. Results of the observational campaign, presented in a paper published Nov. 20 on the arXiv preprint server, yield important insights about the structure and properties of this cluster.

A NASA mission to Venus already delayed by three years because of institutional issues is seeking to avoid another delay of nearly a year and a half. The post VERITAS Venus mission seeks to avoid further delays appeared first on SpaceNews.

HELSINKI — Chinese launch startup Landspace put two satellites into orbit late Tuesday with the first launch of an improved version of the Zhuque-2 rocket. The Zhuque-2 enhanced version (ZQ-2E) The post Landspace puts 2 satellites in orbit with enhanced Zhuque-2 rocket appeared first on SpaceNews.

Today, the ESA awarded a contract to Open Cosmos to design, build, launch and commission the NanoMagSat Scout satellites. This new mission will uphold Europe’s leadership in monitoring Earth’s magnetic field and contribute to applications such as space weather hazard assessment, navigation, directional drilling, and more.

The SubOrbital Express-4 sounding rocket was successfully launched from the Esrange Space Center outside Kiruna, in the north of Sweden, at 06:00 CET yesterday morning. 

Image: Webb traces spiral arms in infrared

As the launch of the Sentinel-1C satellite approaches, we reflect on some of the many ways the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission has given us remarkable radar insights into our planet over the years.

NASA estimated it would have to cancel up to four commercial lunar lander missions and delay up to four more to fly a rover mission the agency announced in July it planned to cancel. The post NASA outlines impacts of VIPER on CLPS lunar lander program appeared first on SpaceNews.

The Federal Communications Commission granted SpaceX conditional approval Nov. 26 to use Starlink broadband satellites to keep T-Mobile smartphone users connected in cellular dead zones across the United States. The post SpaceX gets conditional approval for direct-to-smartphone service appeared first on SpaceNews.

The company won a $5.3 million contract with options for four additional years, bringing the potential total value to $13.3 million The post Slingshot selected to design user experience for U.S. space traffic system appeared first on SpaceNews.

A paper published in Gravitational and Space Research unveils insights gained from International Space Station (ISS) National Laboratory-sponsored research on transport phenomena, fundamental physical processes involving momentum, energy, and mass transfer.

Getting a mission to the point of officially being accepted for launch is an ordeal. However, even when they aren’t selected for implementation, their ideas, and in some cases, their technologies, can live on in other missions. That was the case for the Oversize Kite-craft for Exploration and AstroNautics in the Outer Solar system (OKEANOS) project, originally planned as a Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) mission.

A study that sheds new light on how pulsar signals—the spinning remnants of massive stars—distort as they travel through space, published in The Astrophysical Journal, was led by Dr. Sofia Sheikh, SETI Institute researcher, and performed by a multi-year cohort of undergraduate researchers in the Penn State branch of the Pulsar Search Collaboratory student club.

A Neptune-sized planet, TOI-3261 b, makes a scorchingly close orbit around its host star. Only the fourth object of its kind ever found, the planet could reveal clues as to how planets such as these form.

Results showed that in almost all cases, measured bandwidths were higher than predictions by widely used models of the galaxy, highlighting a need for updates to current ISM density models.

While NASA’s NEOWISE telescope ended its journey through space on Nov. 1, 2024, the team at IPAC, a science center at Caltech, was working on one further gift from the prolific mission.

Researchers have made a record-breaking astrophysical discovery while simultaneously uncovering a possible explanation for the rare and extreme astrophysical event known as long-period radio transients.

Dark ovals in Jupiter’s polar haze, visible only at UV wavelengths, were first noticed 25 years ago, then ignored. A new study shows that these dark UV ovals are common, appearing at the south pole in 75% of Hubble Space Telescope images taken since 2015. They appear less often at the north pole. The scientists theorize that a magnetic vortex generated in the ionosphere stirs up and concentrates the hydrocarbon haze that blankets the poles.

Instruments aboard robotic landers have measured seismicity on the moon and Mars, helping researchers learn about the inner workings of those celestial bodies. But the internal makeup of Venus is still not known, in part because high winds and blistering temperatures make it significantly more difficult to detect quakes on the second planet from the sun.

Researchers from the Curtin node of the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) have made a record-breaking astrophysical discovery while simultaneously uncovering a possible explanation for the rare and extreme astrophysical event known as long-period radio transients.

Hidden in plain sight within the Sun’s glare is the ultra-hot yet ghostly faint solar corona, source of the solar wind and solar storms. The only way to see this key element of the Solar System is either through the remarkable cosmic coincidence that gives rise to total solar eclipses – the fact that the Sun is not only 400 times bigger than our Moon but also about 400 times further away, allowing it to cover the solar disc entirely – or else artificially, through Sun-obscuring telescopes. 

In this episode of Commercial Space Transformers SpaceNews Senior Staff Writer Jason Rainbow speaks with Pawel Skonieczka, Director – TMT Investment Banking, Deutsche Bank. The post Pawel Skonieczka, Deutsche Bank – Commercial Space Transformers appeared first on SpaceNews.

While Jupiter’s Great Red Spot has been a constant feature of the planet for centuries, University of California, Berkeley, astronomers have discovered equally large spots at the planet’s north and south poles that appear and disappear seemingly at random.

The People’s Republic of China remains the United States’ chief adversary in space. In his October 2022 speech at the 20th Party Congress, Chinese President Xi Jinping highlighted the innovation The post Overregulation is stifling the commercial space industry. The Launch Communications Act is a good start. appeared first on SpaceNews.

Astronomers from China and South Korea report the detection of a contact binary system with an extremely low mass ratio of only 0.0356. The newfound system, which received the designation TYC 3801-1529-1, is therefore the lowest mass ratio contact binary discovered to date. The finding was detailed in a paper published November 19 on the preprint server arXiv.

SAN FRANCISCO — Spectrum Advanced Manufacturing Technologies announced an agreement Nov. 26 to manufacture satellites and components for D-Orbit USA. D-Orbit USA, formed by Italian space logistics company D-Orbit, selected The post Spectrum AMT to produce D-Orbit USA satellites appeared first on SpaceNews.

Trying to understand the makeup and evolution of the solar system’s Kuiper belt has kept researchers busy since it was hypothesized soon after the discovery of Pluto in 1930. In particular, binary pairs of objects there are useful as indicators since their existence today paints a picture of how energetic or violent the evolution of the solar system was in its early days four billion years ago.

NASA has selected SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy to launch a multibillion-dollar mission to Saturn’s moon Titan in 2028. The post NASA selects Falcon Heavy to launch Dragonfly mission appeared first on SpaceNews.

Another private company will soon try its hand at sticking a landing on the moon for NASA.

The engine for a new flagship small Japanese rocket burst into flames Tuesday during a combustion test, causing no injury or damage to the outside but destroying the engine and extensively damaging its test facility, officials said.

Firefly Aerospace says it is planning a launch of its first lunar lander mission in January, meaning that none of the three commercial lander missions once slated to launch in the fourth quarter of this year will do so. The post Firefly sets January launch date for first lunar lander mission appeared first on SpaceNews.

When Albert Einstein introduced his theory of general relativity in 1915, it changed the way we viewed the universe. His gravitational model showed how Newtonian gravity, which had dominated astronomy and physics for more than three centuries, was merely an approximation of a more subtle and elegant model.

Research by astronomers and computer scientists at the University of Hawaiʻi Institute for Astronomy (IfA) could revolutionize our understanding of the sun. The study, part of the “SPIn4D” project, combines cutting-edge solar astronomy with advanced computer science to analyze data from the world’s largest ground-based solar telescope atop Haleakalā, Maui.

A new computer model can be used to detect and measure interior oceans on the ice covered moons of Uranus. The model works by analyzing orbital wobbles that would be visible from a passing spacecraft. The research gives engineers and scientists a slide-rule to help them design NASA’s upcoming Uranus Orbiter and Probe mission.

When NASA’s Voyager 2 flew by Uranus in 1986, it captured grainy photographs of large ice-covered moons. Now nearly 40 years later, NASA plans to send another spacecraft to Uranus, this time equipped to see if those icy moons are hiding liquid water oceans.

When Voyager 2 flew by Uranus and Neptune 40 years ago, astronomers were surprised that it detected no global dipole magnetic fields, like Earth’s. The explanation: the ice giants are layered and unmixed, which prevents large scale convection to create a dipole field. But what substances would remain immiscible? A scientist modeled the interiors and found that water-rich and hydrocarbon-rich layers naturally form at extreme pressure and temperature, and they do not mix.

Five telescopes of the H.E.S.S.-collaboration in Namibia are used to study cosmic radiation, especially gamma radiation. With data from 10 years of observations, researchers have now been able to detect cosmic electrons and positrons with an unprecedented energy of more than 10 tera-electronvolts.

NASA’s Europa Clipper, which launched Oct. 14 on a journey to Jupiter’s moon Europa, is already 13 million miles (20 million kilometers) from Earth. Two science instruments have deployed hardware that will remain at attention, extending out from the spacecraft, for the next decade—through the cruise to Jupiter and the entire prime mission.

Dark matter made out of axions may have the power to make space-time ring like a bell, but only if it is able to steal energy from black holes, according to new research.

Diamond rain? Super-ionic water? These are just two proposals that planetary scientists have come up with for what lies beneath the thick, bluish, hydrogen-and-helium atmospheres of Uranus and Neptune, our solar system’s unique, but superficially bland, ice giants.

A new mid-infrared image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope features the Sombrero galaxy, also known as Messier 104 (M104). The signature, glowing core seen in visible-light images does not shine, and instead a smooth inner disk is revealed.

Recent findings from the International Space Station address

The Japan-led XRISM (X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission) observatory has captured the most detailed portrait yet of gases flowing within Cygnus X-3, one of the most studied sources in the X-ray sky.

Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant, head of Space Systems Command: ‘We’re realizing there are true industrial base concerns’ The post Pentagon underestimated supply chain fragility, now racing to fix gaps appeared first on SpaceNews.

The universe just got a whole lot bigger—or at least in the world of computer simulations, that is. In early November, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory used the fastest supercomputer on the planet to run the largest astrophysical simulation of the universe ever conducted.

Bulgaria-based microsatellite specialist EnduroSat has ordered 100 electric propulsion systems from Austria’s Enpulsion as demand for larger spacecraft continues to rise. The post EnduroSat orders 100 Enpulsion propulsion systems appeared first on SpaceNews.

Ontario, N.Y. — Optimax, the largest precision optics manufacturer in the United States, has announced the appointment of Joseph Spilman as CEO and Pete Kupinski as president. With a solid The post Optimax names Joseph Spilman CEO and Pete Kupinski president  appeared first on SpaceNews.

An international team of researchers has made new observations of an unusual supernova, finding the most metal-poor stellar explosion ever observed.

Scientists have recently identified electrons and positrons with the highest energies ever recorded on Earth. They provide evidence of cosmic processes emitting colossal amounts of energy, the origins of which are as yet unknown.

An international team of researchers has made new observations of an unusual supernova, finding the most metal-poor stellar explosion ever observed.

Water is ubiquitous on Earth—about 70% of Earth’s surface is covered by the stuff. Water is in the air, on the surface and inside rocks. Geologic evidence suggests water has been stable on Earth since about 4.3 billion years ago.

Identifying asteroids on a potential collision course with Earth could be made easier thanks to an advancement in how to track their orbits more precisely.

‘We’re going to see more budgets moving from traditional programs of record into the newer space community’ The post Space firms see government contracting shakeup in second Trump term appeared first on SpaceNews.

Hatches between a Russian module and the rest of the International Space Station were closed hours after a Progress cargo spacecraft docking Nov. 23 when the station’s crew reported an “unexpected odor” from the spacecraft. The post ISS crew reports “unexpected odor” from Russian Progress cargo spacecraft appeared first on SpaceNews.