NIH Director Francis Collins and NASA Astronaut Kate Rubins to keynote joint session at ISSRDC

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER (FL), July 20, 2021 – The 2021 International Space Station Research and Development Conference (ISSRDC) will include a virtual keynote session that will feature two key science figures: National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Dr. Francis Collins…

NASA returns Hubble Space Telescope to science operations

NASA has returned the science instruments on the Hubble Space Telescope to operational status, and the collection of science data will now resume. This will be the first science data collected since the payload computer experienced a problem on June…

National Astronomy Meeting 2021: Media invitation

Around 850 astronomers and space scientists will gather online from 19 – 23 July, for the Royal Astronomical Society National Astronomy Meeting 2021 (NAM 2021) hosted by the University of Bath. Postponed in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the…

The dark matter particle explorer has measured high-precision cosmic ray helium energy spectrum

Dark Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) Collaboration directly observed a spectral softening of helium nuclei at about 34TeV for the first time. This work was based on measurements data of the helium spectrum with kinetic energies from 70 GeV to 80…

To give astronauts better food, engineers test a fridge prototype in microgravity

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Astronauts have been going to space since 1961, but they still don’t have a refrigerator to use for keeping food cold on long missions to the moon or Mars. Through experiments conducted in microgravity, a team…

City, University of London consortium wins highly competitive ESA funding

Funded by the European Space Agency (ESA), City, University of London will be spearheading the development of next-generation AI-based guidance, navigation and control (GNC) systems for space exploration. A research consortium led by City’s Professor of Robotics and Autonomous Systems,…

New study sews doubt about the composition of 70 percent of our universe

Researchers the world over have long believed that 70 percent of the universe is composed of dark energy, a substance that makes it possible for the universe to expand at an ever-increasing rate. But in a new study, University of Copenhagen researchers te

Skoltech and MIT researchers identify optimal human landing system architectures to land on the Moon

Researchers from Skoltech and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have analyzed several dozen options to pick the best one in terms of performance and costs for the ‘last mile’ of a future mission to the Moon – actually delivering astronauts…

NASA partners with companies to test satellite fixtures for robotic grappling

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, has chosen three companies to participate in a new partnership to test and evaluate satellite servicing technologies. Altius Space Machines of Broomfield, Colorado, Honeybee Robotics of Brooklyn, New York, and Orbit Fab…

New study highlights first infection of human cells during spaceflight

Astronauts face many challenges to their health, due to the exceptional conditions of spaceflight. Among these are a variety of infectious microbes that can attack their suppressed immune systems. Now, in the first study of its kind, Cheryl Nickerson, lead…

Engineers propose solar-powered lunar ark as ‘modern global insurance policy’

The ambitious project proposed by a University of Arizona team aims to preserve humankind – and animal-kind, plant-kind and fungi-kind – in the event of a global crisis

A super-Earth is discovered which can be used to test planetary atmosphere models

During the past 25 years astronomers have discovered a wide variety of exoplanets, made of rock, ice and gas, thanks to the construction of astronomical instruments designed specifically for planet searches. Also, using a combination of different observing techniques they…

The CLASP2 space experiment achieves an unprecedented map of the Sun’s magnetic field

Every day space telescopes provide spectacular images of the solar activity. However, their instruments are blind to its main driver: the magnetic field in the outer layers of the solar atmosphere, where the explosive events that occasionally affect the Earth…