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The Lucy mission will study the Trojan asteroids of Jupiter – News of November 13, 2018 – NASA has approved the development of the Lucy mission as part of the Discovery program. The mission now has a budget and a development schedule. Lucy will leave Earth in October 2021 for a 12-year trip. This will…
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The dwarf planet Ceres could shelter life Ceres is a dwarf planet almost 1000 km in diameter and its density is relatively low. We assumed that Ceres was relatively rich in water, and the space probe Dawn confirmed it during its flights over Ceres from 2015, with its spectrometers. The discovery of ammonia reinforces the…
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6% of meteorites on Earth would come from Vesta In the early 2010s, the data collected by the three scientific instruments embarked on the Dawn space probe revealed the complexity of Vesta, a celestial body that could be classified between an asteroid and a planet. Like a planet, the structure of Vesta is differentiated, because…
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Dawn mission comes to an end, 11 years after launch – News of November 6, 2018 – The Dawn space probe did not respond to a planned communication attempt on October 31st. NASA concluded that Dawn has exhausted the hydrazine reserves of its micro-propellants. The space probe is therefore unable to point its communication antennas…
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Hubble continues mission with backup gyroscope – News of November 6, 2018 – In early October, the Hubble space telescope lost one of its gyroscopes. It needs three gyroscopes to work at full capacity, and it now has only three left. The calibration of the backup gyroscope has been more complicated than expected, but the…
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Farewell Kepler ! – News of November 6, 2018 – The Kepler space telescope officially comes to the end of its mission. It has been several months since Kepler used up his propellant reserves. After almost ten years of mission, the exoplanets hunter retires with a nice list of 2600 exoplanets discovered and more than…
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The non-profit organization Copenhagen Suborbitals wants to send a man into space – News of November 4, 2018 – Space has long been reserved for governments. The private space sector is in turn booming, and the democratization of launch technologies could allow new types of actors to gain access to space. Copenhagen Suborbitals is a…
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Gravitational waves could carry messages – News of November 4, 2018 – A team of Russian mathematicians has just published a study. According to this study, it should be possible to encode a message in gravitational waves. There is, however, a huge gap between theory and practice. Although it is possible to encode information in…
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A valve would be at the origin of the Soyuz incident on October 11 – News of October 28, 2018 – We have a little more information about what happened on October 11 aboard the Soyuz spacecraft. We can even be optimistic about a quick return of manned flights. The findings of the investigation will…
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Can we calculate the mass of a cluster of galaxies ? – News of October 28, 2018 – We could try to represent the mass of a cluster of galaxies with respect to the mass of the Milky Way. But the problem is that we do not really know the mass of the Milky Way.…
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The Mars Express mission benefits from the Mars 96 probe experience – News of October 28, 2018 – The Mars 96 mission was an extremely ambitious and exciting mission. The mission consists of over forty experiments, half a ton of scientific payloads, an orbiter, two landers and two penetrators. This would get huge amounts of…
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Millions of celestial objects could carry life – News of October 15, 2018 – The origin of life is usually a question studied by biology. But this is also of interest to astronomers, with a hypothesis involving celestial objets. This hypothesis is called panspermia. The idea is that life could have been transported to Earth…
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The discovery of the first exomoon is almost confirmed – News of October 9, 2018 – Since the detection of the first exoplanet almost thirty years ago, we have focused on the observation of other objects orbiting around far stars. We have already discovered clues about the presence of exocometes or protoplanetary disks, but we…
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Astronomers discover a new Transneptunian object which orbit is strange – News of October 9, 2018 – The Kuiper belt is a disk of objects in orbit around the sun. Beyond Neptune, some of these objects have a very elliptical orbit and are difficult to explain. This is for example the case of the dwarf…
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Cosmic radiations, the main obstacle to travel to Mars – News of October 7, 2018 – Studies are pessimistic about the impact that deep space radiations could have on the gastrointestinal functions of the human being. Researchers have simulated the impact of cosmic radiations on living things, and the results are bad. The stomach and…
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What would happen if we had to face an incident involving an RTG ? – News of October 7, 2018 – The use of the Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG) in space still has a bright future. In 2013, the United States of America resumed the production of plutonium-238 for space use, for the first time…
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Zoom on the history and the lunar ambitions of Moon Express – News of October 4, 2018 – Moon Express wants to make money by sending payloads to the Moon and collecting lunar samples When we look at NASA’s lunar exploration program, we note that it gives an important place to the private companies of…
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Ariane 5 will celebrate its hundredth flight tonight – News of September 25, 2018 – Ariane 5, one of the most emblematic launchers on the planet will pass the milestone of its hundredth flight. Ariane 5 will fly from the Kourou base shortly before midnight. Once again, Ariane 5 will demonstrate its great specialty, the…
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Cleaning the mirrors of giant telescopes is very complex – News of September 23, 2018 – Telescope mirrors are made with great care, but they end up being exposed to the elements during their observation period. Dust and other impurities can accumulate, reducing their performance. The mirrors must therefore be regularly maintained. They are often…
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Goodbye Delta 2 ! – News of September 23, 2018 – A mythical rocket has just retired. The Delta 2 rocket completed its last flight on September 15 by putting into orbit an Earth observation satellite. It was also its hundredth success in a row. Made by ULA, Delta 2 is not a particularly powerful…
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The observation of a far quasar allows to study the beginnings of the universe – News of September 18, 2018 – Quasars are very active nuclei of galaxies. In these nuclei, an extremely massive central black hole accumulates matter in its accretion disk, then expels it along the lines of its magnetic field. The energies…
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The Minister of French Armies evokes a veritable orbital war – News of September 11, 2018 – A few months ago, several generals of the French army had expressed their concern about inspector satellites, spacecrafts capable of performing orbital rendezvous maneuvers to inspect, listen to and perhaps even disrupt the operation of military satellites. These…
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The Japanese test a miniature space elevator – News of September 11, 2018 – A space elevator would physically connect the ground to the geostationary orbit. It could be used to move men and cargo at a very low energy cost. Space elevators have their defenders and detractors. What is certain is that they risk…
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Astronomers discover 12 new moons in orbit of Jupiter – News of July 24, 2018 – We may think that if we try to discover planets in other systems, it is because we found all that there was to find in the solar system. However, it is a misconception : the objects of the solar…
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A huge space object has been named a rogue planet – News of August 14, 2018 – Several rogue planets have already been discovered since the early 2000s. These would be very common objects in the universe. Some researchers even think that there are more rogue planets than stars in our galaxy. An American university…
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Mars colonization projects have been imagined since a long time Early in the history of spaceflight, Mars was the center of attention. As early as 1948 Wernher von Braun, one of the pioneers of modern astronautics, is thinking about a program of missions to the Red Planet. Even before the first space flight, his book…
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The atmosphere of Venus has many similarities with the Earth The idea of establishing a human presence on Venus may seem strange because the surface temperature of the planet approaches 500 degrees Celsius, its atmospheric pressure is similar to the pressure of the deep seabed and there is almost no oxygen. In addition, rains of…
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Boeing CST-100 Starliner : an old design outside, a concentrate of technologies inside – News of August 9, 2018 – The first flight of the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft is scheduled to take place shortly after SpaceX. In its design, the CST-100 Starliner is a spacecraft quite similar to the SpaceX Crew Dragon, with an Apollo-style…
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New study finds 4 planets orbit around Tau Ceti – News of August 15, 2017 – The Tau Ceti star is the 22nd star closest to our solar system. It is located only twelve light-years away from Earth. Just like our sun, it is a yellow dwarf. It is a little smaller and less active…
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