Triton’s geysers will be targeted by the Trident mission or other missions – News of May 12, 2019 – Thirty years ago, the Voyager 2 space probe made the unique flyby of Neptune and Triton. The trajectory of the space probe was studied to fly only 40 000 kilometers height above the largest moon in…
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The Europa Clipper mission will embark 8 scientific instruments to study Europa – News of May 12, 2019 – The Europa Clipper mission will not have a lander, but it will be specially equipped to collect a lot of data from Europa, the icy moon of Jupiter. NASA will have to carefully prepare the scientific…
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A Japanese CubeSat will impact the Moon in 2020 or 2021 – News of May 12, 2019 – Last year, CubeSats MarCO-A and MarCO-A followed InSight towards Mars. These are the first CubeSats to have made an interplanetary mission. We lost contact with them at the beginning of the year. This first success inspires all…
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NASA will use a Falcon 9 booster for three missions – News of May 7, 2019 – Slowly but surely, SpaceX seems to convince NASA with its reuse approach. The US space agency has already used several reused Falcon 9 launchers, but for the first time it could use the same booster for three missions.…
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LandSpace unveils methane engine that will allow it to reach orbit – News of May 7, 2019 – LandSpace was not demotivated after the failure of its first orbital attempt last year. On the contrary, the Chinese company has more ambitions. LandSpace is now working on a medium-capacity methane-powered launcher, and it’s moving fast. Photos…
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LIRGO and VIRGO detect the meeting of a neutron star and a black hole – News of May 7, 2019 – In 2015, the first gravitational wave was observed, nearly a hundred years after Albert Einstein predicted their existence. Gravitational waves are oscillations in the curvature of space-time. They occur when masses are accelerated. These…
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Trident space mission to study Triton, Neptune’s Biggest Moon – News of April 30, 2019 – The outer planets of the solar system are still almost unexplored. Uranus and Neptune in particular have been stealthily flown over by the Voyager 2 space probe. A new orbiter could be sent around one of these two worlds.…
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Wormholes would not be shortcuts, on the contrary – News of April 30, 2019 – In 1915, Albert Einstein presented his theory of general relativity, a revolutionary description of gravitation. A few weeks later, he received two letters from another German physicist Karl Schwarzschild. These letters contained the first exact solution to the equations of…
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The LUVOIR space telescope could study exoplanets thanks to a 15-meter mirror – News of April 28, 2019 – The LUVOIR space telescope (Large UV Optical Infrared Surveyor) is currently only a project. This is one of the four concepts studied to become one of NASA’s future big telescopes. LUVOIR would work primarily on visible…
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The Chinese New Space is more and more supervised – News of April 28, 2019 – On Wednesday, April 24, China celebrated its fourth space day. This celebration has become annual throughout the country. This has been an opportunity to announce a new legal framework for Chinese New Space companies, which are more than 100.…
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Focus on the history, current challenges and perspectives of the Space Rider – News of April 25, 2019 – The development of space shuttles to transport cargo is trendy Although very secretive, the American autonomous shuttle X-37B seems to be used regularly by the American army for long stays in space. Being able to send…
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ArianeWorks is in charge of imagining the Ariane launchers of the future – News of April 23, 2019 – Europe seems already well engaged on the after Ariane 6. At the end of February, we learned the creation of ArianeWorks, a small structure which should allow to accelerate certain developments, a little like a start-up…
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Space debris, mega satellite constellations : emergency in the Earth orbit – News of April 18, 2019 Tens of thousands of space debris in Earth orbit Humanity has been able to put satellites in orbit for more than 60 years. Its space activities have been the source of invaluable scientific discoveries and great moments in…
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A new super-Earth in the planetary system of Proxima Centauri – News of April 16, 2019 – We know that Proxima Centauri is home to at least one planet in its habitable zone, Proxima b. Proxima b was discovered in 2016. Its mass is greater than the mass of the Earth. It could potentially have…
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The Stratolaunch giant plane takes off for the first time – News of April 16, 2019 – In October 2018, Paul Allen, the famous co-founder of Microsoft, passed away. Like many other famous people in Silicon Valley, Paul Allen dedicated the last years of his life to the space adventure, first by funding the SpaceShipOne…
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India successfully fired anti-satellite missiles – News of April 14, 2019 – At the end of March, India fired anti-satellite missiles. During this test, a modified version of an interceptor missile hit an old Indian satellite in low orbit, 300 kilometers above sea level. The missile only needed three minutes of flight to reach its…
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A meteor has exploded over the Bering Sea – News of April 14, 2019 – On December 18, 2018, a large asteroid exploded in the atmosphere over the Bering Sea. The detonation released ten times more energy than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, yet no one noticed anything. Some satellites have detected it : the…
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The Event Horizon Telescope project has revealed the first image of a black hole – News of April 11, 2019 – Yesterday, the international project Event Horizon Telescope revealed its first results, the first real image of a black hole. This project involves numerous observatories spread over several continents. It uses the technique of interferometry.…
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Parker Solar Probe flew over the sun for the second time – News of April 9, 2019 – The Parker Solar Probe spacecraft is now dangerously close to the sun. The American spacecraft has just completed its second flyby of our star. It has passed only 24 million kilometers from the surface of the sun.…
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China and France collaborate more and more on common projects – News of April 2, 2019 – China seeks to collaborate with other countries in its space program, including France. The visit to France of Xi Jinping, the President of the Popular Republic of China, was the opportunity to sign a new agreement on space…
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The pulsar PSR J0002 + 6216 was ejected at an incredible speed by a supernova – News of April 2, 2019 – Supernovas and pulsars are linked because a supernova can give birth to a pulsar. When some massive stars arrive at the end of their life, their hydrostatic balance is broken. The thermonuclear reactions…
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The collision of the Earth with another planet would have created the Moon – News of March 24, 2019 The story of the creation of the Moon is still the subject of intense debate. The scenario of a giant impact is only one hypothesis among others. This hypothesis was formulated in the mid-2000s. We imagine…
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Northrop Grumman’s OmegA launcher wants to meet the needs of the US military – News of March 24, 2019 Many new launchers will arrive in the early 2020s. Last year, Northrop Grumman acquired Orbital ATK, the US specialist in solid propellant propulsion. And Orbital ATK, now Northrop Grumman Innovation System, has a new launcher project…
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The speed of the hypervelocity star LAMOST-HVS1 could have a surprising origin – News of March 19, 2019 – The first hypervelocity star was discovered in 2005. These objects are so fast that their speed exceeds the speed of liberation of the galaxy. They travel at velocities that exceed 500 km per second, which means…
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North Korea targets geostationary orbit and beyond – News of March 17, 2019 – North Korea has a space program and even interplanetary exploration ambitions. Obviously, this is a politically sensitive subject for the country’s allies and opponents. The technology used to create launchers is more or less the same as the technology used to…
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Launch of Federatsiya spacecraft will bring Soyuz to retirement – News of March 17, 2019 – The Soyuz space capsule has been used for more than 50 years to send men into space. In the last 12 years, it was the only space vehicle that could do this, with its Chinese copy, Shenzhou. This will…
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The usefulness of the SLS is more and more challenged – News of March 17, 2019 – Currently, every day there is a new announcement about the Space Launch System (SLS). NASA’s 2020 budget proposal contemplates deleting many missions of the SLS. The SLS will not be used to assemble the LOP-G, nor to launch…
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The observation of another planetary system could explain the orbit of a planet X – News of March 12, 2019 – FarFarOut is part of a class of objects named extreme transneptunians objects. Other objects in this category all have a very eccentric orbit. This is why some researchers believe that a massive object has…
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Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin finally shake up space tourism – News of March 8, 2019 – According to specialists, 2019 should be the year when space tourism will really take off. But it’s been decades since we heard the same sentence. 2018, 2015, 2010, 2007 or even 2001 were also years when space tourism…
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A collision of planets would explain the characteristics of the exoplanet Kepler-107 c – News of March 5, 2019 – Most of the time, only very limited information can be obtained about exoplanets, worlds that orbit distant stars. By combining detection methods, it is possible to know more or less accurately the diameter, mass and…
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