ESA satnav receiver vans – driving between the busy heart of Rotterdam, quiet countryside, and the Agency’s ESTEC technical centre – have confirmed that Galileo signals now provide a first position fix more rapidly, while also offering improved robustness in challenging environments and streamlined access to time information.
Space News & Blog Articles
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Kombucha: Ally for Moon and Mars
ESA is testing kombucha cultures, famous for their fermentative properties and potential health benefits, to assess their resilience in space. These cultures hold great promise for supporting humans on the Moon and Mars.
Polaris is the Closest, Brightest Cepheid Variable. Very Recently, Something Changed.
When you look up in the night sky and find your way to the North Star, you are looking at Polaris. Not only is it the brightest star in the Ursa Minor constellation (the Little Dipper), but its position relative to the north celestial pole (less than 1° away) makes it useful for orienteering and navigation. Since the age of modern astronomy, scientists have understood that the star is a binary system consisting of an F-type yellow supergiant (Polaris Aa) and a smaller main-sequence yellow dwarf (Polaris B). Further observations revealed that Polaris Aa is a classic Cepheid variable, a stellar class that pulses regularly.
The Closest Black Holes to Earth are Probably Hidden in This Nearby Star Cluster
In the constellation Taurus, there is a cluster of a few hundred stars known as the Hyades. The cluster is just 150 light-years away, and it could be harboring a stellar-mass black hole.
Experience the Overview Effect with the Felix & Paul VR trilogy 'Space Explorers: Blue Marble'
Felix & Paul Studios announces the release of the VR space trilogy, "Space Explorers: Blue Marble"
Globular cluster glitters in stunning new Hubble photo
A new photo from the Hubble Space Telescope captures a glittering globular cluster deep in our Milky Way galaxy.
Astronaut wields new space camera to see lightning strikes on Earth
European astronaut Andreas Mogensen captured incredible footage of lightning strikes during just 10 days in space in 2015. He plans a deeper study during his new six-month stay on the International Space Station, with a new camera.
India's Chandrayaan-3 robotic moon explorers don't have heaters. Can they survive the frigid lunar night?
India's Chandrayaan-3 moon lander and rover are facing their first lunar night. Their chances of waking up at dawn whittle down to luck.
Every Night and Every Morning, the Moon Rumbles With Tiny Quakes
The Moon was geologically active between 3.7 and 2.5 billion years ago, experiencing quakes, volcanic eruptions, and outgassing. Thanks to the Moon being an airless body, evidence of this past has been carefully preserved in the form of extinct volcanoes, lava tubes, and other features. While the Moon has been geologically inert for billions of years, it still experiences small seismic events due to tidal flexing (because of Earth’s gravitational pull) and temperature variations. These latter events happen regularly and are known as “moonquakes.”
The US Space Force has a new mission statement to secure everything 'in, from and to space'
The United States Space Force has unveiled a concise new mission statement after the service's top officer criticized the previous statement as 'long and cumbersome.'
NASA may have unknowingly found and killed alien life on Mars 50 years ago, scientist claims
One researcher hypothesizes that experiments carried out by NASA's Viking landers in 1976 could have inadvertently killed microbes living in Martian rocks. Other experts are skeptical.
Nightfox 100V night vision binoculars review
The Nightfox 100V is a good budget pair of digital night vision binoculars but it takes a bunch of batteries to power it.
India's lunar lander finds 1st evidence of a moonquake in decades
The possible moonquake was detected by India's Chandrayaan-3 mission on its third day on the lunar surface.
Hurricane Lee looks absolutely terrifying in this footage from inside its eye (video)
Storm chasers with the Air Force Reserve's Hurricane Hunters caught terrifying footage from inside the eye of Hurricane Lee on Sept. 8, showing the storm brimming with lightning.
The Outer Space Treaty was Signed in 1967. Can it Handle the Future of Space Exploration?
In a recent study submitted to the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society for the 8th Interstellar Symposium special issue, which is due for publication sometime in 2024, Dr. Jacob Haqq-Misra, who is a senior research investigator and the Chief Operating Officer and co-founder at the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, examines how future space exploration governing laws could evolve, either crewed or uncrewed and in the solar system or beyond. He views this study as an expansion of interplanetary governance models he previously discussed in his book, Sovereign Mars, to explore potential limits on space governance at interstellar distances.
Ultra-powerful space explosion, 1st of its kind, may have been triggered by black hole star-destroyer
A "Luminous Fast Cooler" explosion that emits as much energy in weeks as the sun will over 10 billion years could be the result of a black hole wrecking a star.
A Black Hole Nibbles on a Star Every 22 Days, Slowly Consuming it
Astronomers working with NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory have spotted something unusual. The observatory’s X-Ray Telescope (XRT) has captured emissions from a supermassive black hole (SMBH) in a galaxy about 500 million light-years away. The black hole is repeatedly feeding on an unfortunate star that came too close.
NASA's mighty SLS megarocket for Artemis moonshots 'unaffordable' for sustained exploration, audit finds
NASA needs to be more transparent about the costs and schedules for its Space Launch System moon rocket, a newly released audit has found.
Live coverage: SpaceX to launch Falcon 9 rocket with 22 Starlink satellites from Cape Canaveral
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch 22 second-generation Starlink internet satellites at 7:56 p.m. EDT (2356 UTC) Friday evening from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Additional launch opportunities are available at 11:12 p.m. EDT (0312 UTC) and 11:30 p.m. EDT (0330 UTC). The Falcon 9’s first stage booster will land on the drone ship ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas’ in the Atlantic Ocean. The booster is making its 7th flight.
