NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite was built to search for new planets, but astronomers at Ohio State found it could also observe supernovas created by exploding white dwarf stars. This means we might soon have a better idea about why they explode, and what they leave behind.
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In a move that may one day lead to satellites that can build other satellites, NASA has agreed to a US$73.7 million contract with Made in Spac to launch a demonstrator spacecraft that will manufacture and assemble satellite components in orbit.
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Researchers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, and the University of Bath are developing a technique that uses satellite radar imaging to monitor the safety of bridges and other large-scale infrastructure.
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Many of us will know what bubbling lakes of lava within volcanoes look like. After all, we've seen them our entire lives in movies and on TV. But that doesn't mean they're common. In fact, only seven lava lakes have been found so far, until now.
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Mission plans for SULIS, a solar project designed to answer fundamental questions about the physics of solar storms, have been revealed. Using a cluster of small, formation-flying satellites known as CubeSats, SULIS will directly measuring the magnetic field of the Sun's corona for the first time.
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Declassified spy satellite photos have revealed that compared to the last quarter of the 20th century, Himalayan glaciers have been melting twice as fast this century. In a rare piece of good news, a separate study has shown that a Greenland glacier has gained ice for the third year in a row.
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Future spacecraft could be getting around under the power of sails. But of course, with no wind in space, these sails are catching another method of propulsion – photons from starlight. The tech is soon due to be demonstrated in action onboard LightSail 2, a small satellite due to launch next week.
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In order to address the problem of space debris, some groups are looking into methods of de-orbiting satellites once their operational lives have ended. One of the latest approaches involves getting the spacecraft to dispense a long strip of tape, instead of using their own propellant.
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Space flight requires quite a lot of single-use machinery, and that gets expensive and wasteful. Now ESA has outlined its reusable Space Rider capsule, which would carry scientific equipment to the edge of space and back several times over.
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If you thought SpaceX launching 60 Starlink satellites at once was impressive, Cornell University managed 105 small satellites. The ChipSats, called Sprites, forming a swarm of cracker-sized nanosatellites were deployed from the Kicksat-2 CubeSat on March 18, 2019 at an altitude of 300 km (186 mi).
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