News: – May 17, 2017 – Despite his setbacks with his heavy SLS launcher that has already cost him $ 23 billion for a a very meager result, the US space administration intends to put a number of ships inhabited or not on the various bodies of our solar system. It is for this reason…
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Navigating in space is a complex science, it is not always easy to determine the position of a ship with great precision. Precision, however, is needed to know when to turn on its engines and succeed in complex maneuvers such as the gravitational assistance of a star. Often the probes and other vessels move by…
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NGC 1052 DF2 would be a galaxy with almost no dark matter – News of April 3, 2018 – Dark matter has been conceptualized to answer a paradox between theory and observations. Galaxies do not behave just as they should. Some of them move as if they were ten times more massive than they appear…
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SpaceX continues to put satellites of the Iridium Next constellation into orbit – News of April 3, 2018 – If we look at the work done by Iridium Next and SpaceX, we could say that satellite constellations are already being put in place. In just over a year, the partnership between the two companies has…
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Chinese companies will drastically lower SmallSats launch prices – News of March 20, 2018 – The SmallSats market is exploding. More and more new businesses are being created to take advantage of this opportunity. Some are already operational like Rocket Lab and its space rocket Electron. But many other companies are only at the design…
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NASA presents a concept of a magnetic shield for spacecraft – News of March 13, 2018 – When we interest in interplanetary travel, we immediately thinks of the problem of acceleration. How can a spacecraft go fast enough to free itself from Earth’s gravity and travel to another planet in a relatively short time ?…
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ESA develops an electric thruster powered by gas – News of March 6, 2018 – ESA announced yesterday on its website to have tested a new type of thrusters concept very interesting. Satellites placed in very low orbits, around 200 km above sea level, have to cope with the residual friction of the Earth’s atmosphere.…
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Exoplanets from the TRAPPIST-1 system could have a lot of water – News of February 14, 2018 – In 2015, we discovered the star TRAPPIST-1 and its 7 exoplanets, located just 39 light-years away from Earth. The dwarf star quickly aroused the interest of researchers of extraterrestrial life. Indeed, these 7 planets all have a…
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Dream Chaser space shuttle will transport cargo to the ISS – News of February 14, 2018 – SpaceX and Boeing should be able to offer manned flights to the ISS this year. For Sierra Nevada, the projects are also advancing because the company has just received official authorization to carry out its first cargo mission…
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The Google Lunar XPrize will end without a winner – News of February 6, 2018 – At the end of January, we learned that the Google Lunar XPrize would arrive at its deadline without winner. The Google Lunar XPrize is a competition that was launched in 2007 to boost the private space sector. It proposed…
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New telescopes search Earth twins – News of January 30, 2018 – ExTRA is a new set of three telescopes that will focus on the detection of Earth twins orbiting around red dwarfs. It is installed at the La Silla Observatory, located in northern Chile. It has just started its observations. The three telescopes that…
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NASA studies an interstellar travel to Alpha Centauri – News of January 16, 2018 – Almost every year, new space probes point to different planets and celestial bodies to tell us more about what is happening beyond the Earth. Unfortunately, there is little chance that we will be able to witness an interstellar travel during…
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Europe continues to study the reuse of space rockets with the Callisto demonstrator – News of January 9, 2018 – Prometheus is a new engine in development. It could be a turning point for reusable space rockets of ArianeGroup. But Prometheus is not the only project in Europe to prepare for reuse. CNES and its…
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Voyager 1 thrusters reignited after 37 years of inactivity – News of December 5, 2017 – The Voyager 1 space probe is the farthest object a man has created. The space probe used its thrusters to orient its antenna towards the Earth. These thrusters had not been used for 37 years ! This is another…
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ISS astronauts test HISat modules from NovaWurks – News of November 7, 2017 – The design of a satellite faces significant constraints. It must be compact enough to fit under the rocket fairing, and possibly to share with another satellite. That is why the instruments of a satellite or a space probe are assembled within…
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The Project Blue telescope wants to make photos of exoplanets – News of October 31, 2017 – Over the last twenty years, most exoplanets have been detected using indirect detection methods. But we are still unable to study them. It is therefore impossible to know their atmospheric composition or their water content, although we can…
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Lockheed Martin and NASA reveal the Mars Base Camp concept, a martian space station – News of October 10, 2017 – Lockheed Martin introduced at the end of last month an orbital base concept for Mars, called Mars Base Camp. The concept of assembling a base in orbit as a starting point for ground expeditions…
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Australian government announces creation of national space agency – News of October 3, 2017 – Australia is a country that benefits from a strong economy, a growing population and therefore more and more financial means. It is therefore logical that the Australian government announced at the Adelaide Congress that the country was ready to create…
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Mercury would house more water than expected – News of September 26, 2017 – When we think of Mercury, the planet closest to the sun, we imagine a dry and desolate hell. The surprise was great when, in 2012, the Messenger space probe detected ice water at the pole of Mercury. It is currently estimated…
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Goodbye Cassini ! – News of September 19, 2017 – After 14 years of studying the Saturnian system, the Cassini space probe has just completed a vertiginous dive into the atmosphere of the gas giant. Cassini has achieved one of the most ambitious and successful missions in the history of space exploration. The Cassini-Huygens mission…
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ISS astronauts protect themselves from solar flares – News of September 12, 2017 – On September 6th, a team of British researchers detected the biggest solar flare in 12 years. Other high-power solar flares have followed in recent days. A solar flare consists of increased activity of a part of the sun that can…
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The Restore-L project wants to refuel satellites in full flight – News of August 29, 2017 – The accumulation of satellites and space debris makes some orbits very dangerous. Many space agencies are working on solutions and many companies are now desorbiting their satellites when they reach the end of their life. But thanks to…
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The CUVE mission will explore the atmosphere of Venus with a CubeSat – News of August 22, 2017 – Although Venus is close to the Earth geographically and in terms of its characteristics, Venus is not at all as popular as Mars, no doubt because of its monstrous atmosphere. NASA has just selected the CUVE…
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Laser SETI will try to detect lasers from space – News of August 8, 2017 – Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is a set of American research programs that has been trying to detect signs of extraterrestrial life since the 1960s. SETI uses radio telescopes primarily to observe stars in search of a signal of…
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LISA Pathfinder validates LISA mission technologies – News of July 25, 2017 – Gravitational waves are predictions derived from general relativity. They appear under certain circumstances when very massive objects move at high speed. For astrophysicists, the confirmation of the existence of these gravitational waves has opened a new field of observation : it is…
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Quantum teleportation and space, the future of quantum computing ? – News of July 18, 2017 – Quantum entanglement is a phenomenon in which two particles have states dependent on each other, regardless of their geographic distance. The reactions between two entangled particles seem to be instantaneous. If for example two photons are entangled and…
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