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A little more than a month after the European Space Agency lost contact with its flagship Earth-observation satellite, Envisat, ESA officials are declaring the mission concluded. For more than a decade, this spacecraft has contributed to boosting our understanding of the world we live in.
Since April 8, when radio ... |
9 May 2012
10:35 GMT |
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Experts at the European Space Agency (ESA) announce that they have lost contact with Envisat, the organization's flagship Earth-monitoring spacecraft. The satellite has been orbiting our planet for more than a decade, and has produced vast amounts of scientific data thus far. ESA Mission Control is currently w... |
13 April 2012
05:07 GMT |
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While analyzing several hundred confirmed extrasolar planets, astronomers found that gas giants seem to prefer orbiting their parent stars in specific orbits, while leaving others entirely unoccupied. A new study now provides an answer to this mystery.
Jupiter- or Saturn-like exoplanets occupy these preferred regio... |
19 March 2012
15:21 GMT |
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An unmanned spacecraft developed by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for the US Air Force (USAF) just celebrated its first anniversary in space. The Orbital Test Vehicle 2 (X-37B OTV-2) has been in space for over 12 months.
Dubbed USA-226, this is only the second flight ever conducted with t... |
7 March 2012
03:27 GMT |
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According to analysts, we may be able to keep the cloud of space junk currently clogging Earth's orbits from getting larger for at least 200 years or so. All we have to do is remove about 5 large pieces of debris every year. This objective is not too ambitious, and could be achieved with small investments.The ma... |
25 February 2012
04:46 GMT |
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A group of scientists at NASA is strongly considering the possibility of constructing what they refer to as a waypoint tended by humans on the far side of the Moon. This structure would serve as a relay and resupply base for space missions probing deeper within the solar system.
Top NASA officials say that the cons... |
10 February 2012
08:45 GMT |
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The list of conditions that need to be met for a planet to be considered habitable is now one item larger. Experts say that even exoplanets located in their stars' habitability zones may not be inhabitable if their axis have extreme tilts, such as Uranus'.
On Earth, a tilt of 23+ degrees, achieved more tha... |
9 February 2012
11:13 GMT |
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Both GRAIL spacecraft are now in lunar orbit, officials from the American space agency announced. The two probes managed to achieve orbital insertion in time, on December 31, 2011 and January 1, 2012, respectively.
The purpose of the Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) is to create the most detailed ma... |
3 January 2012
01:31 GMT |
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A group of scientists proposed in a new scientific paper that Earth has two moons, the familiar one we see in the sky at night, influencing our planet's tides, and another one, only as big as a very small car.
The asteroid is not always the same, the team behind the paper believes. They say that there is a spac... |
23 December 2011
10:35 GMT |
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Shortly after entering its low-altitude mapping orbit (LAMO), the NASA Dawn spacecraft began sending back a large number of highly-detailed images of how the largest asteroid in our solar system looks like. The views were snapped using the framing cameras on the spacecraft.
For experts studying the early days of th... |
22 December 2011
02:42 GMT |
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Astronomers now propose that Mercury may have been set on its weird orbit by an asteroid impact that occurred a long time ago. The idea came to scientists after noticing that our solar system's innermost planet was not tidally-locked to the Sun. Such a state can be seen on the Moon, which always keeps the same... |
12 December 2011
03:59 GMT |
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The United States Strategic Command reportedly now lists pieces of the Russian-built Phobos-Grunt spacecraft as part of the large batches of space junk clogging Earth's orbit. Additional pieces of the probe are believed to have already reentered Earth's atmosphere, burning up high in the sky.
It would now ... |
7 December 2011
05:43 GMT |
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For at least a month from now on, the NASA Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission will require no course corrections, mission controllers at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) announce.
They say that the launch was carried out exquisitely, placing the spacecraft on such a precise course that the first... |
2 December 2011
03:54 GMT |
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Days are passing by, and Russian engineers are still unable to contact the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft. The Mars-bound mission failed shortly after launch, when its main thrusters failed to initialize and put it on a course towards the Red Planet. Russian Federal Space Agency (RosCosmos) mission controllers attempted t... |
12 November 2011
06:59 GMT |
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In a new video released by NASA, three members of the Expedition 29 crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS) can be seen floating inside the orbital lab as the entire spacecraft is performing an orbital reboost maneuver.
This process compensates for the small orbital delay that all objects in orbit experie... |
28 October 2011
14:01 GMT |
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NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) mission controllers announce that both spacecraft in the American space agency's Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) have successfully completed the first flight path correction maneuvers in their long trek to the Moon.
Apollo astronauts made their way to Eart... |
7 October 2011
03:46 GMT |
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The NASA Dawn space probe has descended into a new science orbit around Vesta, the largest asteroid in our solar system. The spacecraft is currently in its second of four planned orbits. After completing studies from all these locations, it will depart for the dwarf planet Ceres in mid-2012.
Mission controllers at... |
1 October 2011
04:19 GMT |
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According to the conclusions of the latest study on how and when the NASA Upper Atmospheric Research Satellite (UARS) will return to Earth, it would appear that the instrument will start burning in the upper reaches of the atmosphere a day earlier than first established.
Experts now expect the event to take place ... |
17 September 2011
04:04 GMT |
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Since the Sun first formed, about 4.6 billion years ago, the planets in our solar system have been shifting their positions non-stop. At this time, the trend is less obvious, but in the earliest days gas giants such as Jupiter ran wild. Now, a study looks at how the planet influences the solar system.Jupiter is the l... |
25 August 2011
06:35 GMT |
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After arriving at the largest asteroid in our solar system about a month ago, a NASA space probe has now succeeded in entering the first of four science orbits it needs to take around the space body. This marks the first time a spacecraft is orbiting an object of interest in the Inner Asteroid Belt (IAB).The NASA Daw... |
12 August 2011
04:34 GMT |
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Officials at the American space agency announce that the second ARTEMIS spacecraft managed to insert itself into lunar orbit, after a prolonged trip through space. The probes were originally a part of a mission to study Earth. At one point, experts decided that there is no reason to let the five-satellite constellati... |
20 July 2011
02:56 GMT |
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The two ARTEMIS spacecraft NASA wants to put in lunar orbit have nearly reached their destination, officials from the American space agency announce. The probes have been flying towards the Moon for more than 18 months now.In the mean time, they carried out in excess of 90 orbital maneuvers, in addition to a large nu... |
24 June 2011
04:14 GMT |
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Officials from the European Space Agency (ESA) announced that one of their Automated Transfer Vehicles (ATV) aboard the International Space Station (ISS) was just used to modify the orbital facility's path in its orbit.The ATV, called Johannes Kepler, carried out there successful reboost maneuvers, during which ... |
11 June 2011
05:27 GMT |
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According to the results of a new supercomputer simulation, it would appear that many extrasolar planets have exomoons in their orbit. In fact, more than a quarter of them might have companions. These results come from one of the most interesting and comprehensive models of exoplanets developed to date. The discovery... |
10 June 2011
08:46 GMT |
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According to a senior official from the United States Air Force (USAF), the number of objects classified as space junk today is bound to increase more than three times over within the next two decades, with disastrous consequences for space programs around the world,Currently, there are more than 50 countries involve... |
10 May 2011
03:36 GMT |
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Experts have been trying for a long time to figure out precisely how is it that certain extrasolar planets, which orbit very close to their parent stars, are still able to hold on tho their atmosphere. A new study now provides a potential explanation for this. Of the more than 520 exoplanets discovered thus far, astr... |
20 April 2011
07:55 GMT |
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Scientists have recently found a correlation between the fact that the Sun is undergoing a period of solar maximum and the chance that space junk in low-Earth orbit (LEO) has of becoming even more dangerous to spacecraft and astronauts leaving Earth.
In more than 50 years of spaceflight, people have put massive am... |
6 April 2011
01:41 GMT |
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Though the twin Earth hypothesis has been abandoned a long time ago, some astronomers have not given up the quest of searching for cosmic objects that may accompany Earth in its orbit. Their work paid off too, and recently a team was able to identify an asteroid that meets this criterion.In the past, people believed ... |
5 April 2011
09:33 GMT |
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Experts at private company Armadillo Aerospace are currently seeking to develop the necessary experience to put a vehicle in low-Earth orbit, and they are going about fulfilling that object by creating a tube rocket as a test platform. From the outside, the vehicle looks like a sounding rocket, but Armadillo says tha... |
24 January 2011
09:55 GMT |
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In a new large-scale study they conducted on a number of exoplanetary systems, astronomers in Japan discovered that inclined orbits may be the rule rather than the exception for planets orbiting other stars than our own Sun.
In other words, it could that our solar system is the exception to the rule and not the ot... |
19 January 2011
02:16 GMT |
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A group of analysts believes that there is no possible way of cleaning up Earth's clogged orbit without the establishment of an international fund that would gather the necessary money. Years and years of reckless launches and orbital maneuvers have left their mark on the lower portions of Earth's orbit (LE... |
14 December 2010
10:21 GMT |
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The American space agency announces the development of one of the most complex predictive models ever developed in the world, aimed at simulating the potential interactions between spacecraft and space junk for the next few centuries. The model has been dubbed “low-Earth to geosynchronous environment debris&rdq... |
10 December 2010
06:05 GMT |
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The Akatsuki space probe may have failed to achieve orbital insertion around Venus due to a collision with an impact object, or because one of its engine nozzles may have malfunctions, say investigators in Japan, quoted by news reports.
The spacecraft had spent more than 6 months traveling through space before arr... |
9 December 2010
02:33 GMT |
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Less than a week ago, the Chinese National Space Administration (CNSA) launched a new military communications satellite in Earth's orbit, marking the 14th successful rocket launch in the country for 2010. The agency thus set a new record. Until now, the Chinese never managed to put more than 11 payloads in space... |
30 November 2010
02:34 GMT |
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Astronomers have produced the first detailed study showing some of the composition and structure of the exoplanet WASP-17b, which has gained notoriety after experts learned that it orbits its parent star backwards, in what is called a retrograde orbit. The peculiar extrasolar planet was announced back in August 2009.... |
23 November 2010
08:48 GMT |
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Officials at the European Space Agency (ESA) announce that the Hylas-1 satellite has just been mated with its Ariane 5 heavy-lift delivery system, at the agency's spaceport in Kourou, the French Guyana. After spending several days being fueled in a special facility, the spacecraft was moved to the Final Assembly... |
19 November 2010
09:14 GMT |
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In a recent maneuver, the Envisat satellite has been moved to a lower orbit around the Earth. This move will conserve fuel, and will extend spacecraft operations by as much as three years. Envisat, built, launched and operated by the European Space Agency (ESA), has been providing the international scientific communi... |
28 October 2010
06:53 GMT |
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New data appear to indicate that it may become possible to use the interactions of exoplanetary gravitational forces to determine the existence of space bodies that would otherwise remain hidden from sight. Recently, the international astronomical community entered a frenzy when a team announced that it had potential... |
21 October 2010
06:31 GMT |
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The latest communications satellites sent to orbit by the US Air Force (USAF) is showing slow, but constant progress in rising to its correct operational altitude. A glitch that affects the spacecraft now prevents it from firing its main thrusters, which would allow it to propel itself to a decent observations positi... |
7 October 2010
06:09 GMT |
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A lot of ink has been spilled over the liquid ocean that is believed to exist below the icy crust of Saturn's moon Enceladus, and yet few observed the fact that the discussion shouldn't have existed at all. We now take for granted that the geysers at the moon's South Pole emit water particles and organ... |
7 October 2010
04:31 GMT |
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According to officials at XCOR Aerospace Inc., it would appear the the suborbital spacecraft they are developing, called the Lynx, has just passed a critical mission milestone, when it managed to complete its first supersonic wind tunnel test.The company is very pleased with the progress it's recording with the ... |
20 September 2010
09:26 GMT |
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Officials with the US Air Force (USAF) announced that they are delaying plans to host a competition for building the second Space Based Space Surveillance (SBSS) satellite.The announcement was made on September 16. The decision is important because it place a very important satellite on hold, analysts say. This April... |
20 September 2010
02:57 GMT |
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Astronomers say that new evidence collected during asteroids observations show that the space rocks are more than just simple objects revolving around the Sun – they are constantly-changing little worlds onto themselves.In other words, it would now appear that the space rocks can create miniaturized planetary s... |
26 August 2010
09:01 GMT |
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At this point, launching a spacecraft – be it a space shuttle or a regular satellite – is a very risky business. Experts in charge of placing the vehicle in orbit need to calculate the risk of it being impacted by loose pieces of space junk, and that risk has gradually increased over the past decade. Many... |
2 August 2010
10:53 GMT |
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A group of engineers from the Advanced Space Concepts Laboratory (ASCL) at the University of Strathclyde were recently able to demonstrate that displaced orbits are possible. Hypothesized more than 25 years ago, this peculiar family of orbits was calculated as possible, but thought impossible by the international sci... |
26 July 2010
10:40 GMT |
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Officials at the European Space Agency (ESA) announce that their telecommunications satellite Hylas has just successfully completed a new battery of tests. The assessments were of critical importance for the mission, given that satellite is scheduled for launch later this year. Only a few final overviews remain to be... |
5 June 2010
06:12 GMT |
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For many years, analysts have been arguing for the necessity to keep weapons out of Earth's orbit. However, in more recent times, talks of a weapons race in space have been multiplying, mostly due to the tests that the United States have conducted recently. The US Air Force (USAF) launched its X-37B robotic spac... |
5 May 2010
09:44 GMT |
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Officials at the European Space Agency (ESA) are proud to announce that the payload assembly for the first ever satellite in the Galileo satellite navigation constellation has just left the Portsmouth, the United Kingdom, this morning. The equipment is en route to Italy from its assembly factory. Once it arrives, it ... |
26 April 2010
16:01 GMT |
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Though many people might not know this, we currently have the technology to perform in-orbit repairs on satellites, and also to refuel them as they go. The best example of this is the Hubble Space Telescope, one of the more renowned satellites in the world, which has thus far received five servicing missions, all of ... |
10 April 2010
03:45 GMT |
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Since the advent of the Space Age, countless satellite and rocket launches have made their way to orbit, either to be used later on, or as test vehicles. As rockets continue to take off, the space above us is constantly getting more crowded, with shards of metal flying at incredibly high speeds along their respective... |
27 March 2010
06:06 GMT |
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