Space

The United Arab Emirates Space Agency on Sunday released its first photo of Mars, taken by its Hope Probe. “The transmission of the Hope Probe’s first image of Mars is a defining moment in our history and marks the UAE joining advanced nations involved in space exploration,” Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan said on Twitter.

The Universe is a big place, so scientists are keen to narrow down their search for alien life – maybe by looking for radio signals, or hospitable climates, or huge megastructures. Now another sign of alien life is under consideration: atmospheric pollution. If there are alien civilisations out there, the hypothesis goes, then their activities

In a February 1, 2021 SpaceNews article titled, “An open system for missile-warning satellite data is in the works but faces challenges,” a number of assertions were made that were factually incorrect, misleading and taken out of context about Lockheed Martin’s role in our nation’s premiere missile warning systems, including the Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS),

York Space Systems chairman Charles Beams disagrees with ULA CEO’s Tory Bruno’s assessment of the state of the launch industry There has been a flurry of speculation recently that too much investment is being poured into risky launch ventures, creating a speculative bubble in the launch services sector. Critics, government consultants, and even some military

WASHINGTON — NASA needs to pursue “aggressive” development of space nuclear propulsion technologies if the agency wants to use them for human missions to Mars in the next two decades, a report by a National Academies committee concluded. A Feb. 12 study by the National Academies, sponsored by NASA, said both nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP)

Astronomers using a new technique may have not only found a super-Earth at a neighbouring star, but they may also have directly imaged it. And it could be nice and cozy in the habitable zone around Alpha Centauri. It’s much easier to see giant planets than Earth-size planets. No matter which detection method is being

“We’ve been doing space operations for years under the Air Force. But as a service we now have to advocate for new resources,” said Lt. Gen. B. Chance Saltzman. WASHINGTON — The Space Force is by far the smallest branch of the U.S. military and will have to “punch above its weight” to get its

WASHINGTON — Lynk will start testing cellular connectivity services with its first small satellite in the near future as it plans to begin commercial service early next year. During a panel discussion at the SmallSat Symposium Feb. 11, Margo Deckard, co-founder and chief operating officer of Lynk, said tests it performed last year demonstrated its

A dense clump of stars a few thousand light-years away has been harbouring a surprise in its core. Rather than one relatively chunky black hole, astronomers have found that the globular cluster NGC 6397 is wrapped around a cluster of smaller, stellar-mass ones. This could not only help us better understand the formation of larger

Demonstrating optical crosslinks is a top priority for SDA and DARPA as any future military network has to be able to move huge amounts of data. WASHINGTON — The Pentagon’s space agency this year will launch a series of experiments — including satellites with laser links and missile-tracking sensors — as is prepares to begin

HawkEye 360 CEO John Serafini: Government contracts help startups raise private funds needed to pay for the space and ground infrastructure. WASHINGTON — About 270 of the 620 remote sensing satellites in orbit are privately owned with about 200 of these belong to U.S. companies, according to the Aerospace Corp. Only about 50 are owned

The giant Martian sandstorm of 2018 wasn’t just a wild ride – it also gave us a previously undetected gas in the planet’s atmosphere. For the first time, the ExoMars orbiter sampled traces of hydrogen chloride, composed of a hydrogen and a chlorine atom. This gas presents Mars scientists with a new mystery to solve:

SAN FRANCISCO — Hewlett Packard Enterprise is preparing to send a second-generation Spaceborne Computer to the International Space Station later this month. The Spaceborne Computer-2 will be linked to Microsoft’s Azure cloud through NASA and HPE ground stations, meaning the space station will have far more data processing power and better connections with Earth than

The most distant known object in the Solar System is now confirmed. FarFarOut, a large chunk of rock found in 2018 at a whopping distance of around 132 astronomical units from the Sun, has been studied and characterised, and we now know a lot more about it, and its orbit. It’s about 400 kilometres (250

WASHINGTON — NASA is no longer considering launching the Europa Clipper mission on the Space Launch System, deciding instead to launch the spacecraft on a commercial rocket it will procure in the next year. During a Feb. 10 presentation at a meeting of NASA’s Outer Planets Assessment Group (OPAG), leaders of the Europa Clipper project

China’s Tianwen-1 probe entered the orbit of the planet Mars on Wednesday, state media said, after it launched from southern China last July. It is the latest step in Beijing’s ambitious space programme, which aims to establish a crewed space station by 2022 and eventually put a man on the Moon, and has opened up

Jim McClelland: “I give a lot of credit to the cubesat guys.” WASHINGTON — Technological advances in small satellites are helping improve spacecraft designs and pushing the industry to take more risks, Jim McClelland, vice president of mission architecture at Maxar Technologies, said Feb. 10 at the SmallSat Symposium. “It’s been a very exciting transformation

SAN FRANCISCO – Satellite communications startup Analytical Space Inc. won a $26.4 million contract to develop and launch six cubesats and two hosted payloads to begin establishing the Fast Pixel Network for optical communications. The three-year contract was awarded by AF Ventures, the service’s venture arm, with funding from the U.S. Space Force Space and

The United Arab Emirates’ “Hope” probe on Monday successfully entered Mars‘ orbit, making history as the Arab world’s first interplanetary mission. The probe is designed to reveal the secrets of Martian weather, but the UAE also wants it to serve as an inspiration for the region’s youth. “To the people of the UAE, to the

“AWS is moving into space in a very big way,” said Clinton Crosier, director of aerospace and satellite solutions. WASHINGTON — Amazon Web Services is keeping its sights on the space sector. The cloud computing giant provides ground infrastructure for companies to process and analyze data from satellites, and is now looking to attract new