A Hall-effect thruster could equip the LOP-G – News of March 3, 2019 – The X3 ion thruster is a very interesting project from NASA’s Next Leap program. The goal of this program is to develop some of the technologies that will further explore the solar system. X3 is a Hall-effect thruster. This means that…
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Canadian Space Agency to supply Canadarm to LOP-G – News of March 3, 2019 – Canada has just confirmed its participation in the LOP-G, the future lunar space station. The manipulative arm of the Canadian Space Agency, named Canadarm 3, will be Canada’s largest participation. US space shuttles were loaded with Canadarm 1. Canadarm 2…
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A new moon of Neptune has just been discovered – News of February 24, 2019 – A new moon of Neptune has been known since 2013, but sometimes it takes time to formalize a discovery. It was named called Hippocamp. This moon is very small, so it looks like an asteroid. However, it could teach…
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An underground ocean would be responsible for the large fractures visible on Charon – News of February 19, 2019 – Charon, Pluto’s moon, was photographed by the spacecraft New Horizons. Charon has a diameter of 1200 km, which makes it a huge moon compared to its planet. Its icy surface is lacerated with faults, mountains…
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Goodbye Opportunity ! – News of February 17, 2019 – After 15 years on the planet Mars, the rover Opportunity was finally declared dead on February 13, 2019. In fact, the rover no longer sent any sign of life to NASA since many months. But NASA wanted to give it a chance to resume communications.…
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Everyone wants to create a moon base – News of February 14, 2019 – The possibility of colonizing the Moon is studied in detail by NASA, ESA and CNSA, and also Roscosmos. Many private companies also have this goal, like Blue Origin, SpaceX, Moon Express and many other companies. Space agencies and private companies are…
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Soyuz 5 engine tests will begin soon – News of February 12, 2019 – On February 4, 2019, Vladimir Putin and the director of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, took stock of the future of the new Russian launchers. The development of Soyuz 5 seems to be progressing well. The Soyuz 5 engine is being prepared for…
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Yenisei, the new super-heavy launcher by Roscosmos – News of February 12, 2019 – On February 4, 2019, Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Rogozin, the director of Roscosmos, spoke of a super-heavy launcher to go to the Moon, called Yenisei. It will use elements of Soyuz 5 and Angara to limit development costs. Yenisei could be…
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New Horizons unveils the true form of Ultima Thule – News of February 12, 2019 – Ultima Thule is intriguing. The first series of photos transmitted by the spacecraft New Horizons unveiled a world in two parts, like a kind of snowman. New Horizons has just uploaded a new series of photos. This time, these…
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Roscosmos could benefit from a new arms race – News of February 12, 2019 – In recent years, the budget of the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos) is not huge. This has hampered the development of many space programs. We know that Russia wants to launch a new manned spacecraft called Federatsia and a new range…
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HERA mission to inspect results of DART mission in 2026 – News of February 12, 2019 – The Hayabusa mission and the OSIRIS-REx mission continue to explore Ryugu and Bennu, sometimes presented as dangerous for the Earth. The risk that one of these two objects collides with our planet is actually very small, but one…
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The performance of nuclear thermal propulsion could be boosted – News of February 10, 2019 – Nuclear engines achieved advanced development as early as the 1960s. Nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) provides thrust by reducing pressure of hydrogen through the heat of a nuclear reactor. This generates a strong thrust but it is insufficient to propel…
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Big Crunch, Big RIP, Big Freeze … How will the universe end ? – News of February 10, 2019 – According to the Big RIP model, the accelerated expansion of the universe continually distances large structures and small structures until even subatomic particles are so far apart that none of the fundamental forces can act.…
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Access to space is very expensive and it is one of the main reasons that keeps us from further exploring the solar system. With the arrival of partially reusable launchers, it may start to move. However, we are very far from the dream of a space vehicle that is as easy to use as a…
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Skylon is an 83-meter long space plane concept — Actualités du 7 février 2019 — – News of February 7, 2019 – Skylon is a space plane developed by Reaction Engines Limited. We can trace the origin of its development in the early 1980s. To solve the difficult equation of a single-stage orbital vehicle (SSTO),…
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New Space continues to attract investment – News of February 5th, 2019 – In 2018, New Space startups continued to appeal to investors by getting $ 3 billion around the globe. This represents an increase of almost 30% compared to 2017. More than half of this money has been invested in companies that develop launchers…
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New Glenn will fly to low orbit and beyond – News from February 3, 2019 – In 2016, Blue Origin unveiled its first orbital rocket. Some details of the space rocket continue to evolve. The launcher has the same name as the first American astronaut who reached Earth’s orbit, John Glenn. New Glenn brings together…
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Planetary protection is a major challenge to avoid extraterrestrial contamination – News of February 3, 2019 – We hope to find traces of life on the planet Mars, on Europe the moon of Jupiter, or on some other bodies of the solar system. To achieve this, we send robots to the surface of these bodies.…
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Simulations fail to fully explain the inclination of Uranus – News of February 3, 2019 – The axis of rotation of Uranus is quite unique in the solar system. This is most likely the result of a collision very early in the planet’s history, or several collisions. But it is difficult to explain that not…
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The EnVision mission will scrutinize the movements of the surface of Venus – News from February 3, 2019 – At the end of the year, ESA will launch the Cosmic Vision program with the launch of the CHEOPS mission dedicated to the characterization of exoplanets. Cosmic Vision brings together all the future missions of the…
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Thomas Pesquet could return to space – News of January 27, 2019 – The European Space Agency would like Thomas Pesquet to return to space aboard the ISS. But ESA must have the NASA authorization. For the moment, we do not know much more about it. The timing of flights to the ISS is likely…
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The solar system could contain 200 dwarf planets – News of January 27, 2019 – The differentiation between planets and dwarf planets is very recent. Until the mid-2000s, schoolchildren learned that Pluto was the ninth planet in the solar system. This changed with the discovery of many Pluto-like bodies in the Kuiper belt. With the…
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Spacety could build 100 satellites in 2020 – News of January 11, 2019 – Spacety is a Chinese micro-satellite manufacturer established in 2016. The company manufactures satellites for universities or other start-ups in China. Satellites manufactured by Spacety were for example embarked as a secondary payload during the launch of the Franco-Chinese satellite CFOSAT (Chinese-French…
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COMSAT wants to launch a new satellite mega-constellation – News of January 11, 2019 – COMSAT is another company that wants to deploy a satellite mega-constellation. It aims to observe the Earth for industrial and logistic applications. A first plan aims to put into orbit 60 satellites. COMSAT hopes to quickly increase that number to…
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LaserFleet wants to launch a satellite mega-constellation – News of January 11, 2019 – LaserFleet wants to put into orbit a constellation of several hundred telecommunications satellites. These satellites would communicate by laser to provide data to aircraft in flight, to other satellites or for ground applications. LaserFleet’s goal is to provide faster and cheaper…
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Io would have more than 400 active volcanoes on its surface – News of January 7, 2019 – Currently in orbit around Jupiter, the Juno space probe took a picture of Io, which highlights a volcanic plume on this moon of Jupiter. This photo reminds how Io is a unique and violent world. Of the…
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The development of JUICE continues without problems – News of January 6, 2019 – The development of the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) space probe is progressing well. The launch of the ESA space probe is scheduled for the summer of 2022, to go into Jupiter’s orbit in 2030. This is one of the most…
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The rings of Saturn could disappear – News of December 23, 2018 – The rings of Saturn are superb but we are more and more certain that they are only temporary. They could have disappeared in a few hundred million years. A new study published December 17, 2018 describes how the inner part of the…
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BepiColombo successfully tests its ion engines – News of December 11, 2018 – The Euro-Japanese mission BepiColombo has just successfully started up its ionic engines, the most powerful to have been deployed in space. This first ignition follows a period of intensive testing that demonstrated that the four engines used by the propulsion module work…
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The light emitted by the blazars makes it possible to better know the universe – News of December 11, 2018 – A team of researchers has devised a method to calculate the number of photons that have been produced in the entire observable universe since its creation. When we look at the sky, we can…
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