SPACENEWS

NASA crew members of the SpaceX Crew-4 mission to the International Space Station. Pictured from left are NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren and Bob Hines. NASA has assigned two crew members to launch on the agency’s SpaceX Crew-4 mission – the fourth crew rotation flight of the Crew Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station. NASA Read More

Dazzling instruments that capture breathtakingly detailed images of the Sun have sparked an artistic collaboration that is airing on primetime television. The video shows how artist Melanie King has reimagined representations of the scientific instruments on board the ESA-led Solar Orbiter spacecraft, painted using light-sensitive chemicals and illuminated with ultraviolet light. The result is a Read More

This week’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week features an impressive portrait of M1-63, a beautifully captured example of a bipolar planetary nebula located in the constellation of Scutum (the Shield). A nebula like this one is formed when the star at its centre sheds huge quantities of material from its outer layers, Read More

For Valentine’s Day, the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over Valentine Island in northern Western Australia. The tiny Valentine Island, visible in the top-left of the image, measures around 1.6 km in length and around 250 m wide. The island is located in the King Sound, a large gulf and inlet of the Indian Ocean Read More

In early 2019, all eyes were fixed on the Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica, where a massive iceberg, around the size of Greater London, appeared poised to break off. Almost two years later, the berg is desperately clinging on, although current data indicate calving is imminent. A new crack, spotted in images captured by the Read More

This image features the southeast wall of a small crater located a few hundred kilometres to the north of the giant Hellas impact basin on Mars. The complete crater itself is about 12 km in diameter; this image shows a 5 x 10 km area. The Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging System (CaSSIS) onboard the Read More

NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover is due to land on the Red Planet at 21:43 CET on 18 February 2021. In order to communicate with Earth from its landing site in Jezero Crater, the rover will rely on spacecraft orbiting Mars to relay the images and other data it collects back to Earth and pass Read More

On 18 February, NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover will land on the Red Planet ESA’s Mars orbiters – the ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and Mars Express – are supporting the landing TGO will relay important data from Perseverance to Earth as soon as four hours after landing Mars Express is monitoring the local Read More

This satellite mockup, seen during antenna testing, shows the shape of ESA’s new Proba-V Companion CubeSat, which is due for launch at the end of this year. ESA-P. de Maagt The mission is a 12-unit ‘CubeSat’ – a small, low-cost satellite built up from standardised 10-cm boxes. It will fly a cut-down version of the Read More

Sea salt embedded in the dusty surface of Mars and lofted into the planet’s atmosphere has led to the discovery of hydrogen chloride – the first time the ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter has detected a new gas. The spacecraft is also providing new information about how Mars is losing its water. A major quest Read More