Scientists at the University of Arizona are counting down the days until a space probe carrying samples from an asteroid is back on Earth. FOX 10’s Steve Nielsen has more on the OSIRIS-REx mission, and why the samples are so important for researchers.
Of the 250 grams of samples, NASA officials will keep 75% of the samples in storage for future generations, whom might discover ways to test the rocks in ways we can’t even comprehend.
The secrets the samples hold could be endless.
Aditya L1 is India’s first space-based mission to study the Sun, which is scheduled to be launched in 2023. The spacecraft is named after Aditya, the Hindu god of the Sun. Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) aims to place Aditya L1 in a halo orbit around the Sun-Earth L1 Lagrange point, which is about 1.5 million kilometres from Earth.
The mission’s primary objective is to study the Sun’s corona, which is the corona is a very hot and dynamic region. Aditya L1 will carry a number of instruments to study the corona, including a coronagraph, a spectrometer, and an imager.
A planet with conditions on the surface resembling Earth has been discovered a relatively short distance from us.
In fact, it’s just 31 light-years away, which is the space equivalent of ‘down the road’.
Scientists are always excited when it comes to the discovery of new exoplanets, and this is no different.
Engineers successfully tested hybrid printed circuits at the edge of space in an April 25 sounding rocket flight from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility near Chincoteague, Virginia. Electronic temperature and humidity sensors printed onto the payload bay door and onto two attached panels monitored the entire SubTEC-9 sounding rocket mission, recording data that was beamed to the ground. The experiment by aerospace engineer Beth Paquette and electronics engineer Margaret Samuels of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, sought to prove the space-readiness of printed electronics technology.
Printing electronic circuits on the walls and structures of spacecraft could help future missions do more in smaller packages.
This has been announced by Pulsar Fusion, the company responsible for its manufacture. The name Pulsar Fusion may not be familiar to most people, but it may soon achieve an unprecedented milestone in the world of nuclear fusion. Although there are many steps to take, Pulsar Fusion has been working since 2013 to achieve a rocket that breaks all known barriers to date.
One of the most interesting baby planet systems in the Milky Way has just yielded a detection of water vapor.
And not just anywhere, either. In the extended disk of dust and gas that still clings to the star PDS 70, the James Webb Space Telescope detected the molecular signature of water in the region expected to form Earth-like worlds.
This could help us work out how Earth formed, and where its water came from; but it also is a tantalizing clue about the formation of other potentially habitable worlds out there in the wider galaxy.
Dr. Michael Roberts, Ph.D. is Chief Science Officer of the International Space Station National Laboratory (https://www.issnationallab.org/), and Vice President at the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS — https://www.issnationallab.org/about/center-for-the-advancem…dership/), which as manager of the ISS National Laboratory in partnership with NASA, is responsible to the nation for enabling access to the International Space Station for research, technology development, STEM education, and commercial innovation in space as a public service to foster a scalable and sustainable low Earth orbit economy.
Before joining CASIS in 2013, Dr. Roberts worked as a microbial ecologist, principal investigator, and research group lead in the NASA Advanced Life Support program at the Kennedy Space Center.
Prior to arriving at NASA-KSC in 1999, Dr. Roberts completed an undergraduate degree in biology at Maryville College, a doctorate in microbiology at Wesleyan University and post-doctoral research at the Center for Microbial Ecology at Michigan State University and the RIKEN Institute in Wako-shi, Japan.