NASA's tiny Ingenuity helicopter flew for the 40th time on Mars Thursday (Jan. 19), covering about 584 feet (178 meters) of ground during a 92-second sortie.
Space News & Blog Articles
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Light Pollution Is Increasing Even Faster Than We Realized
The average brightness of the night sky is increasing by 10% every year, making the stars less visible.
The post Light Pollution Is Increasing Even Faster Than We Realized appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
Tiny, bright flashes on the sun could help scientists predict solar flares
Tiny but bright flashes in the sun's corona that precede solar flares could help astronomers predict when the next one might occur.
See the conjunction of Venus and Saturn in free webcast on Jan. 22
The conjunction of Venus and Saturn will be livestreamed so astronomy fans can watch it from the comfort of their homes without having to brave the bitter cold of a January evening.
This new authority will decide the fate of astronomy atop Hawaii's contested Maunakea volcano
After years of conflict, a Hawaiian mountain that's home to some of the most important astronomical observatories on Earth finds itself at peace.
1st-ever recovered US rocket stage, an artifact from Gemini 5, returns to launch site 60 years later
The first U.S. rocket stage to be recovered after its launch, an artifact from Gemini 5, has landed at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Museum, not far from where it lifted off almost 60 years ago.
A new way to Peer Into the Permanently Shadowed Craters on the Moon, Searching for Deposits of Water ice
Not all flashlights are created equal. Some are stronger, consume more power, or have features such as blinking or strobes. Some aren’t even meant for humans, such as a new project that recently received funding from a NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Phase I award. Designed by the Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation (USNC), this flashlight doesn’t emit visible light, but it does emit x-rays and gamma rays, and the researchers on the project think it could be useful for finding resources on the Moon.
The key to this technology is a novel radioisotope that USNC developed that goes by the trade name EmberCore. It is a type of nuclear chargeable ceramic, similar to the radioisotopes contained in the radioisotope thermal generators used by Mars rovers such as Curiosity and Perseverance. So the radioisotope itself can be used as a power source for a rover, but it has a distinct advantage over other RTG cores.
When shielded a specific way, EmberCore emits X and Gamma rays that can be directed to a particular location, much like a flashlight. Effectively, the rover’s power source could also power a high-intensity scanning beam. According to the press release provided by the company in association with the announcement of their Phase I award, the beam could travel many kilometers on an airless world.
Image of a hot EmberCore – multiple cylinders can be stacked to provide increased power output.Credit – USNC
As with many remote sensing applications, that beam would then at least partially reflect back towards a sensor mounted on the rover and can be analyzed to detect the material it was reflecting off of. But, X-rays have an additional feature that anyone who has seen a medical one would be familiar with – they can see what’s underneath an object’s surface. Gamma rays can do so as well.
That added advantage makes having a controllable x-ray/gamma-ray remote sensing platform that also serves as the power source of the rover carrying is an exciting innovation and precisely the kind of research that NIAC usually goes for. The outcome of this preliminary research would be a mission design to one of two places on the Moon.
SpaceX and NASA targeting Feb. 26 for Crew-6 astronaut launch
SpaceX's sixth contracted astronaut flight to the International Space Station for NASA will launch on Feb. 26, if all goes according to plan.
Watch ESA Director General annual press briefing 2023
Join our start-of-the-year press briefing looking ahead at 2023, with ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher and ESA Directors. They’ll present the next steps of Agenda 2025, looking at new missions, science, space safety and commercialisation of space.
Tune in to #ESAwebTV on 23 January, from 08:00 GMT/09:00 CET, to watch live.
More on ESA’s Vision and Agenda25.
Watch live: Astronauts on spacewalk to prep for new ISS solar arrays
Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata and NASA astronaut Nicole Mann suited up and floated outside the International Space Station Friday for a planned six-and-a-half hour spacewalk to prepare the lab for arrival of another pair of new solar arrays later this year.
The astronauts switched their spacesuits to internal battery power at 8:14 a.m. EST (1314 GMT) Friday to mark the official start of the spacewalk, the first of the year at the space station. They floated out of the Quest airlock to begin gathering tools and headed to the starboard, or right, side of the station’s power truss.
Wakata and Mann will complete the installation of a mounting bracket near one of the space station’s eight existing solar arrays, associated with power channel 1B. Work on that task began on a previous spacewalk. Then the astronauts will begin to work on attaching a mounting frame for another solar array on power channel 1A.
The two power channels the astronauts will work on Friday are located on the starboard side of the space station’s solar power truss, which extends the length of a football field. Channel 1B is on the S6 truss section at the far right of the power truss, and Channel 1A is located on the next section inward, called S4.
Leptons: The elementary particles explained
Here we look at what leptons are, how they fit in the Standard Model of particle physics, and their importance in atoms and particle decay.
Astronomers capture radio signal from ancient galaxy at record-breaking distance
Astronomers have detected a radio signal from the most distant galaxy yet. The special radio wavelength could indicate that scientists are ready to investigate how stars formed in the early universe.
Galileo tribute unveiled as Juice says ‘Farewell, Europe’
A commemorative plaque celebrating Galileo’s discovery of Jupiter’s moons has been unveiled on ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, Juice. The spacecraft has just completed its final tests before departing Toulouse, France, for Europe’s Spaceport to count down to an April launch.
BetaFPV Pavo25 Walksnail Whoop review
The BetaFPV Pavo25 Walksnail Whoop Kit is a bind-and-fly PFV cinewhoop drone kit offering simplicity and a high-quality digital FPV feed.
Watch 2 astronauts perform 1st spacewalk of 2023 on Friday
Two astronauts will conduct the first spacewalk of 2023 on Friday morning (Jan. 20), and you can watch the action live.
Star survives spaghettification by black hole
A star has survived a close encounter with a black hole, but the black hole has been able to sneak a second bite.
This Week's Sky at a Glance, January 20 – 29
Venus and Saturn have a close conjunction in twilight. Comet ZTF heads into its best week or two. And Betelgeuse pulls ahead of Sirius ever earlier in the night.
The post This Week's Sky at a Glance, January 20 – 29 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
Visitor to a galaxy
Image: Visitor to a galaxy
Scientists Build a Teeny Tiny Tractor Beam
Tractor beams make intuitive sense. Matter and energy interact with each other in countless ways throughout the Universe. Magnetism and gravity are both natural forces that can draw objects together, so there’s sort of a precedent.
But engineering an actual tractor beam is something different.
A tractor beam is a device that can move an object from a distance. The idea comes from a 1931 sci-fi story called SpaceHounds of IPC:
“There is
such a thing as a ray-screen, you kill-joy, and there are also lifting or tractor
rays—two things I’ve been trying to dope out and that you’ve been giving
me the Bronx cheer on. The Titanians have had a tractor ray for ages—he
sent me complete dope on it—and the Jovians ’ve got ’em both. We’ll have
’em in three days, and it ought to be fairly simple to dope out the opposite of
a tractor, too—a pusher or pressor beam.
from Spacehounds of IPC by Edward Elmer ‘Doc’ Smith
If science fiction had anything to say about it, tractor beams would already be commonplace, and we could thank Star Trek and Star Wars for their proliferation.
