Lifeboat Foundation

HELSINKI — Kazakhstan has signed a memorandum on cooperation on the China-led ILRS and will also explore commercial use of each other’s spaceports.

The agreement was signed during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Kazakhstan July 3, which saw the signing of 30 documents between the two sides. The development further bolsters China’s lunar exploration plans.

A joint statement issued by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that the “two sides support exchanges and cooperation between the two countries’ aerospace agencies and enterprises in the peaceful use of outer space, promote mutually beneficial cooperation in the moon and deep space, and reception and exchange of remote sensing data.”

An international research group led by the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) and comprising 34 research institutes and universities worldwide utilized the Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) on board the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to witness the dramatic interaction between a quasar inside the PJ308–21 system and two massive satellite galaxies in the distant universe.

The observations, made in September 2022, unveiled unprecedented and awe-inspiring details, providing new insights into the growth of galaxies in the early universe. The results, presented July 5 during the European Astronomical Society (EAS 2024) meeting in Padua (Italy), will be published soon in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Observations of this quasar (already described by the same authors in another study published last May), one of the first studied with NIRSpec when the universe was less than a billion years old (redshift z = 6.2342), have revealed data of sensational quality: the instrument “captured” the quasar’s spectrum with an uncertainty of less than 1% per pixel.

Using the repurposed equipment, a team including Imperial College London researchers have measured parts of the Martian atmosphere that were previously impossible to probe. This includes areas that can block radio signals if not properly accounted for—crucial for future Mars habitation missions.

The results of the first 83 measurements, analyzed by Imperial researchers and European Space Agency (ESA) colleagues across Europe, are published today in the journal Radio Science.

To achieve this, ExoMars’ Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) teamed up with another ESA spacecraft orbiting the red planet: Mars Express (MEX). The two craft maintain a radio link, so that as one passes behind the planet, radio waves cut through the deeper layers of the Martian atmosphere.

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#forallmankind #scifi #space.

Continue reading “The World of For All Mankind EXPLAINED” »

Rather than stretching to infinity and beyond, the universe may have a topology that can eventually be mapped.

The topology of an object specifies how its parts are connected.

It was exciting so early in my career to see a speculative project work out so successfully.

Kratos Defense & Security Solutions (Kratos) has announced the successful test flight of its Erinyes hypersonic test vehicle.

Developed by the company’s Space & Missile Defense Systems Business Unit, the test was completed on June 12, 2024, according to the announcement.

Continue reading “Kratos’ Erinyes hypersonic test vehicle reaches Mach 5 in 1st flight” »

Earth’s largest volcano is Hawaii’s Mauna Loa, a shield volcano with a volume of 18,000 cubic miles. Olympus Mons is 100 times larger. It covers an area 373 miles (600 kilometers) across, about the size of the state of Arizona, and its summit is 17 miles (27 kilometers) high. That is twice the altitude at which commercial jets fly on Earth. Those are both huge measurements for a volcanic feature, but the incredible surface area makes the height look less impressive.

“Normally we see Olympus Mons in narrow strips from above, but by turning the spacecraft toward the horizon we can see in a single image how large it looms over the landscape,” said Odyssey project scientist Jeffrey Plaut.

Odyssey has been orbiting Mars for more than 20 years, having arrived in 2001 to search for water ice buried under the surface. It has spent all these years looking straight down, but NASA fired the probe’s thrusters to reorient it to point the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) at the horizon. That’s how mission managers got the panorama below.

Early analysis of the asteroid Bennu sample, returned by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, offers surprising insights into the early solar system and the origins of life on Earth.