For the hundreds of millions of people living in coastal regions around the world, rising seas driven by climate change pose a direct threat. In order for authorities to plan appropriate protection strategies, accurate information on sea-level rise close to the coast is imperative. For various reasons, these measurements are difficult to get from satellites. However, new ESA-funded research demonstrates how a specific way of processing satellite altimetry data now makes it possible to determine sea-level change in coastal areas with millimetre per year accuracy, and even if the sea is covered by ice.
Space News & Blog Articles
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NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center: A hub for historic and modern-day rocket power
The Marshall Space Flight Center is a hub for historic and modern-day rocket power in Alabama. Once home to Wernher von Braun's crew of German rocketeers, the facility is now home to work for Artemis and Blue Origin.
NASA’s Curiosity Takes Step Toward Solving Mars Methane Mystery
New measurements from NASA’s Curiosity rover show that methane concentrations near the Martian surface vary on a daily cycle. The finding could help reconcile conflicting data.
The Square Kilometer Array has Gotten the Official Green Light to Begin Construction
In Australia and South Africa, there are a series of radio telescopes that will be soon joined by a number of newly-constructed facilities to form the Square Kilometer Array (SKA). Once established, the SKA will have a collecting area that measures a million square meters (close to 2 million square yards). It will also be 50 times more sensitive than any radio telescope currently in operation, and be able to conduct surveys ten thousand times faster.
Europe will launch a new two-handed robotic arm to the International Space Station soon
A new robotic arm built by the European Space Agency will fly to the International Space Station to service its Russian segment.
New NASA chief Bill Nelson brings a politician's eye to space agency
NASA's new administrator, Bill Nelson, is a familiar face in the space community, but the agency he has led for nearly two months now has changed a great deal in recent years.
Potentially More Subsurface Lakes Found on Mars
One of the hardest things to reconcile in science is when new data either complicates or refutes previously findings. It’s even more difficult when those findings were widely publicized and heralded around the community. But that is how science works – the theories must fit the data. So when a team from JPL analyzed data from Mars Express about the Martian South Pole, they realized the findings announced in 2018 about subsurface lakes on Mars might have been more fraught than they had originally thought.
NASA is Testing out new Composite Materials for Building Lightweight Solar Sail Supports
Space exploration is driven by technology – sometimes literally in the case of propulsion technologies. Solar sails are one of those propulsion technologies that has been getting a lot of attention lately. They have some obvious advantages, such as not requiring fuel, and their ability to last almost indefinitely. But they have some disadvantages too, not the least of which is how difficult they are to deploy in space. Now, a team from NASA’s Langley Research Center has developed a novel time of composite boom that they believe can help solve that weakness of solar sails, and they have a technology demonstration mission coming up next year to prove it.
Tropical Storm Elsa delays SpaceX Dragon cargo ship's return to Earth
NASA and SpaceX have delayed the departure of the SpaceX CRS-22 Dragon cargo ship from the International Space Station as Tropical Storm Elsa approaches Florida.
Astronomers see an Accretion Disk Where Planets are About to Form
Planet formation is notoriously difficult to study. Not only does the process take millions of years, making it impossible to observe in real time, there are myriad factors that play into it, making it difficult to distinguish cause and effect. What we do know is that planets form from features known as protoplanetary disks, which are made up of gas and dust surrounding young stars. And now a team using ALMA have found a star system that has a protoplanetary disk and enough variability to help them nail down some details of how exactly the process of planet formation works.
How big is Earth?
How big is Earth? Earth is the fifth-largest planet in the solar system and the densest.
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
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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.
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
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.
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.
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.
