How big is Earth? Earth is the fifth-largest planet in the solar system and the densest.
Space News & Blog Articles
Tune into the SpaceZE News Network to stay updated on industry news from around the world.
NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity sails through 9th flight on the Red Planet
NASA's experimental Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, has now flown nine times on the Red Planet, letting mission engineers test a host of capabilities that could pave the way for more Martian choppers.
The heart of a lunar sensor
Image:
The heart of the Exospheric Mass Spectrometer (EMS) is visible in this image of the key sensor that will study the abundance of lunar water and water ice for upcoming missions to the Moon.
This spectrometer is being delivered to NASA today as part of the PITMS instrument for its launch to the Moon later this year.
EMS is based on an ‘ion trap’, an ingenious detector device that allows researchers to identify and quantify sample atoms and molecules in a gas and allows to establish a corresponding mass spectrum. Scientists at The Open University and RAL Space are developing EMS under an ESA contract.
Lunar molecules entering the sensor are bombarded by electrons emitted by a heated wire to create ions. The resulting ions are stored within an electric field formed by a set of precisely-shaped electrodes. The ions are then released from this ‘trap’ in order of increasing mass/charge ratio into the detector that identifies and quantifies their chemical makeup.
This will allow the instrument to measure water and other molecules in the very thin atmosphere of the Moon throughout the lunar day to study a lunar ‘water cycle’ concept.
Enormous Antarctic lake vanishes in 3 days
Scientists are concerned that increasing amounts of meltwater could be finding its way into the ocean.
Wally Funk to break John Glenn's spaceflight record with Blue Origin flight
Pioneering aviator Wally Funk is set to beat one of John Glenn's spaceflight records.
New exhibit tells 'stranger than fiction' tale of aerospace medicine
A new exhibit at the museum of flight is lifting the curtain on the strange-but-true history of aerospace medicine.
Could we really terraform Mars?
With its frigid temperatures, remoteness from the sun and general dustiness, changing Mars to be more Earth-like is more challenging than it seems (and it already seems pretty tough).
European Robotic Arm ready for space
Video: 00:05:12
The European Robotic Arm (ERA) will be launched to the International Space Station together with the Russian Multipurpose Laboratory Module, called ‘Nauka’. ERA is the first robot able to ‘walk’ around the Russian segment of the Space Station. It has the ability to anchor itself to the Station and move back and forward by itself, hand-over-hand between fixed base-points. This 11-metre intelligent space robot will serve as main manipulator on the Russian part of the Space Station, assisting the astronauts during spacewalks. The robot arm can help install, deploy and replace elements in outer space
ERA is 100% made-in-Europe. A consortium of European companies led by Airbus Defence and Space Netherlands designed and assembled it for ESA. The robotic arm is largely funded by the Dutch government.
This VNR includes interviews to:
- Sytze Kampen: ERA project manager, Airbus Defence and Space Netherlands (in English & Dutch)
- André Kuipers: Astronaut, ESA (in English & Dutch)
China launches Fengyun weather satellite into polar orbit
A Chinese Long March 4C rocket takes off carrying the Fengyun 3E weather satellite. Credit: Xinhua
A new Chinese Fengyun weather satellite launched Sunday and flew into an early morning polar orbit to feed data into global computer models, adding inputs that international weather officials said will improve medium and long-range forecasts.
The Fengyun 3E satellite rocketed into orbit on top of a Long March 4C rocket at 7:28 p.m. EDT Sunday (2328 GMT; 7:28 a.m. Monday in Beijing), according to the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp., or CASC, the top state-run contractor for China’s space program.
The three-stage Long March 4C rocket lifted off from the Jiuquan spaceport in the Inner Mongolia region of northwestern China. The liquid-fueled launcher flew south from Jiuquan before releasing the Fengyun 3E weather satellite into a polar orbit about 500 miles (800 kilometers) above Earth.
China launched the roughly 2.5-ton Fengyun 3E satellite into an orbit that flies along the terminator, or the line between the day and night sides of Earth. Fengyun 3E crosses the equator in the early morning, local time, making it the first civilian weather satellite to launch directly into an early morning orbital plane.
The China Meteorological Administration said Fengyun 3E, designed for a service life of at least eight years, will fill a gap in the early morning orbit. There are aging U.S. military DMSP weather satellites in a similar orbit, but they are well beyond their design lives, and no more DMSP satellites are scheduled for launch.
China launches five Earth observation satellites on Long March 2D rocket
A Chinese Long March 2D rocket lifts off Saturday. Credit: Xinhua
China successfully launched five small remote sensing satellites on top of a Long March 2D rocket Saturday into an orbit more than 330 miles above Earth.
The five spacecraft, all from Chinese companies operated using commercial business models, lifted off at 0251 GMT Saturday (10:51 p.m. EDT Friday) from the Taiyuan launch base in Shanxi province located in northern China.
A Long March 2D rocket carried the satellites into orbit, and officials declared the launch a success, according to the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp., the top government-owned enterprise in China’s space program.
Heading south from Taiyuan, the two-stage Long March 2D rocket dropped its first stage over Chinese territory a few minutes after liftoff. A second stage deployed the five payloads into a near-circular polar orbit with an average altitude of around 333 miles (537 kilometers), at an inclination of about 97.5 degrees to the equator, according to tracking data published by the U.S. military.
The Long March 2D rocket deployed four Jilin Earth observation satellites for Chang Guang Satellite Technology Co. Ltd., a commercial remote sensing company based in China’s Jilin province. The company has successfully launched 30 small remote sensing satellites into orbit since 2015.
Hawking Made a Prediction About Black Holes, and Physicists Just Confirmed it
On its own, a black hole is remarkably easy to describe. The only observable properties a black hole has are its mass, its electric charge (usually zero), and its rotation, or spin. It doesn’t matter how a black hole forms. In the end, all black holes have the same general structure. Which is odd when you think about it. Throw enough iron and rock together and you get a planet. Throw together hydrogen and helium, and you can make a star. But you could throw together grass cuttings, bubble gum, and old Harry Potter books, and you would get the same kind of black hole that you’d get if you just used pure hydrogen.
This strange behavior of black holes is known as the no hair theorem, and it relates to what’s known as the information paradox. In short, since everything in the universe can be described by a certain amount of information, and objects can’t just disappear, the total amount of information in the universe should be constant. But if you toss a chair into a black hole, it just adds to the black hole’s mass and spin. All the information about the color of the chair, whether it’s made of wood or steel, and whether it’s tall or short is lost. So where did that information go?
A black hole seems to strip information from objects. Credit: [email protected] — Gravitation @ Aveiro UniversityOne solution to this information paradox could be possible thanks to Stephen Hawking. Back in 1974, he demonstrated that the event horizon of a black hole might not be absolute. Because of quantum indeterminacy, black holes should emit a tiny amount of light now known as Hawking radiation. Hawking radiation has never been observed, but if it exists the information lost when objects enter a black hole might be carried out of the black hole via this light. Thus the information isn’t truly lost.
If Hawking radiation is real, that also means that black holes follow the laws of thermodynamics. It’s an idea first proposed by Jacob Bekenstein. If black holes emit light, then they have to have a thermal temperature. Starting from Bekenstein’s idea, several physicists have shown that there is a set of laws for black holes known as black hole thermodynamics.
Since you’re reading this article, you’re probably familiar with the second law of thermodynamics, which states that the entropy of any system must increase. This is the reason that a cup of hot coffee cools down over time, slightly heating the room until the coffee and the room are all the same temperature. You never see a cold cup of coffee spontaneously heat up while slightly cooling the room. Another way to state the second law is that heat flows from a hot object to surrounding cooler objects.
More Mysterious Buried Splotches on Mars Might Not be Liquid Water
Astronomers find more bright spots underneath Mars's south polar cap, but could they really be subterranean lakes?
The post More Mysterious Buried Splotches on Mars Might Not be Liquid Water appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
Aphelion Day 2021: Earth is farthest from the sun today!
On July 5, 2021, Earth will be at the farthest point in its orbit around the sun, also known as aphelion.
A 'strange signal' is coming from the Milky Way. What's causing it?
Space Mysteries: A fast radio burst was detected from within our galaxy for the first time. We may be closer to uncovering its origin.
NASA launches 'Mission Equity' to evaluate barriers for underserved communities
The public feedback will help NASA conduct a thorough review of its programs, practices, and policies, according to agency officials.
Earth's cryosphere loses enough ice to cover Lake Superior every year
The planet has been losing 33,000 square miles (87,000 square kilometers) of ice coverage each year since 1979.
Unfortunately, There are Other Viable Explanations for the Subsurface Lakes on Mars
Ever since 1971, when the Mariner 9 probe surveyed the surface of Mars, scientists have theorized that there might be subsurface ice beneath the southern polar ice cap on Mars. In 2004, the ESA’s Mars Express orbiter further confirmed this theory when its Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS) instrument detected what looked like water ice at a depth of 3.7 km (2.3 mi) beneath the surface.
These findings were very encouraging since they indicated that there could still be sources of liquid water on Mars where life could survive. Unfortunately, after reviewing the MARSIS data, a team of researchers led from Arizona State University (ASU) has proposed an alternative explanation. As they indicated in a recent study, the radar reflections could be the result of clays, metal-bearing minerals, or saline ice beneath the surface.
The study, which recently appeared in the Geophysical Research Letters, was led by Carver J. Bierson – a postdoctoral researcher at ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration (SESE). He was joined by Earth and Planetary Sciences Professor Slawek Tulaczyk of UC Santa Cruz (UCSC), ASU research associate Samuel Courville, and Nathaniel Putzig – a senior scientist with the Planetary Science Institute (PSI).
A view of the southern polar plain of Mars with the area scanned by MARSIS highlighted. Credit: USGS Astrogeology Science Center/ASU/ INAFThe MARSIS instrument works by directing a ground-penetrating radar beam towards the surface of Mars, then measuring the reflected echo. An underground zone of liquid water will have very different electrical properties from surrounding ice or rocks and will reflect very strongly. This technique allowed the Mars Express to create a subsurface map of Mars up to depths of 5 km (3 mi).
Back in 2018, an analysis of the subsurface radar reflections by a team of Italian researchers focused primarily on electrical permittivity, which controls the speed of radio waves within a material. The denser the material in question (water, ice, rock, etc.), the slower the waves will travel, and the power of the reflected waves will be affected as well. Due to its brightness, this bright radar reflection was interpreted as a large patch of liquid, briny water.
Chinese astronauts install tools on first spacewalk outside new space station
For the first time, two astronauts have worked outside of China's space station.
Hubble telescope spots red, white and blue stars in sparkly cluster
The Hubble Space Telescope has captured a dazzling new view of a distant star cluster, one filled with stars that sparkle in red, white and blue.
Sun erupts with biggest solar flare in 4 years in early Fourth of July fireworks (video)
The sun erupted with a surprise solar flare on Saturday (July 3), the largest since 2017, in an early explosion of cosmic fireworks ahead of the Fourth of July.
