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December 20, 2016
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EXO WORLDS
Microlensing Study Suggests Most Common Outer Planets Likely Neptune-mass



Greenbelt MD (SPX) Dec 20, 2016
A new statistical study of planets found by a technique called gravitational microlensing suggests that Neptune-mass worlds are likely the most common type of planet to form in the icy outer realms of planetary systems. The study provides the first indication of the types of planets waiting to be found far from a host star, where scientists suspect planets form most efficiently. "We've found the apparent sweet spot in the sizes of cold planets. Contrary to some theoretical predictions, we infer fr ... read more

TECH SPACE
NASA Satellite Servicing Office Becomes a Projects Division
Since 2009, the Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office (SSCO) has been building upon the heritage of satellite servicing and repair that began with NASA's successful servicing of the Hubble Space T ... more
IRON AND ICE
Ceres Offers Insight Into Prospects For Life in Early Solar System
Ceres, the largest body in the main asteroid belt, is pocketed with cold, dark craters, several of which are layered in ice, raising the prospects that this frigid dwarf planet once had perhaps an o ... more
EXO WORLDS
Are planets like those in 'Star Wars
In the "Star Wars" universe, ice, ocean and desert planets burst from the darkness as your ship drops out of light speed. But these worlds might be more than just science fiction. Some of the ... more
EXO WORLDS
Astronomers discover dark past of planet-eating 'Death Star'
An international team of scientists, including researchers from the University of Chicago, has made the rare discovery of a planetary system with a host star similar to Earth's sun. Especially intri ... more
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ROBO SPACE
A hardware-based approach for real world collaborative multi-robots
Technological revolution means robots no longer are the song of the future. The Governor of the Bank of England predicts today that up to half of British workforce face redundancy in the imminent 's ... more
MARSDAILY
Full go-ahead for building ExoMars 2020
The first ExoMars mission arrived at the Red Planet in October and now the second mission has been confirmed to complete its construction for a 2020 launch. ESA and Thales Alenia Space signed ... more
MARSDAILY
Opportunity performs several drives to ancient gully
Opportunity is making progress towards the next science objective of the extended mission. The rover is headed toward an ancient water-carved gully about a kilometer south of the rover's current loc ... more
MARSDAILY
All eyes on Trump over Mars
The year 2016 has seen a rekindling of the human desire to conquer Mars, with public and private interests openly vying to take the first step on the Red Planet, possibly with a stopover on the Moon. ... more
MARSDAILY
Skimming an alien atmosphere
After the smooth arrival of ESA's latest Mars orbiter, mission controllers are now preparing it for the ultimate challenge: dipping into the Red Planet's atmosphere to reach its final orbit. T ... more


New species found near ocean floor hot springs

IRON AND ICE
Ceres: Water ice in eternal polar night
The American Dawn space probe has been orbiting the asteroid Ceres between Mars and Jupiter since March 2015. Thanks to the two identical onboard cameras from the Max Planck Institute for Solar Syst ... more
IRON AND ICE
Where is the Ice on Ceres
At first glance, Ceres, the largest body in the main asteroid belt, may not look icy. Images from NASA's Dawn spacecraft have revealed a dark, heavily cratered world whose brightest area is made of ... more


Russia to face strong competition from China in space launch market
In the decade to come Russia will face strong competition from China for the commercial launch of satellites for developing countries, according to Ivan Moiseev, director of the Institute of Space Policy."China is trying to expand its space launching services, developing new boosters for different segments of the market," Moiseev told RIA Novosti. "It has constructed a new spacecraft launc ... more
Vega And Gokturk-1A are present for next Arianespace lightweight mission

Antares Rides Again

Four Galileo satellites are "topped off" for Arianespace's milestone Ariane 5 launch from the Spaceport

Bremen robot team successfully simulates Mars mission in Utah
A major challenge in the exploration of Mars by robots is its uneven surface, which is marked by trenches and craters. Whether the systems can withstand the rough terrain on the Red Planet, they have to prove it on the earth first - for example, in the rocky deserts of the American state of Utah. There, scientists from the Robotics Innovation Center of the German Research Center for Artifi ... more
First detection of boron on the surface of Mars

All eyes on Trump over Mars

A Promising Spot for Life on Mars

Lunar sonic booms
The sonic boom created by an airplane comes from the craft's large, speeding body crashing into molecules in the air. But if you shrank the plane to the size of a molecule, would it still generate a shock wave? Scientists such as University of Iowa physicist Jasper Halekas hope to answer that question by studying miniature shock waves on the moon. These sonic boomlets, physicists believe, ... more
India Inc joins hands to bid for moon mission

TeamIndus signs contract with ISRO for lunar mission

Moonwalker Buzz Aldrin stable after South Pole health scare

Juno Captures Jupiter 'Pearl'
This image, taken by the JunoCam imager on NASA's Juno spacecraft, highlights the seventh of eight features forming a 'string of pearls on Jupiter - massive counterclockwise rotating storms that appear as white ovals in the gas giant's southern hemisphere. Since 1986, these white ovals have varied in number from six to nine. There are currently eight white ovals visible. The image was ta ... more
Juno Mission Prepares for December 11 Jupiter Flyby

Research Offers Clues About the Timing of Jupiter's Formation

New Perspective on How Pluto's "Icy Heart" Came to Be



Astronomers discover dark past of planet-eating 'Death Star'
An international team of scientists, including researchers from the University of Chicago, has made the rare discovery of a planetary system with a host star similar to Earth's sun. Especially intriguing is the star's unusual composition, which indicates it ingested some of its planets. "It doesn't mean that the sun will 'eat' the Earth any time soon," said Jacob Bean, assistant professor ... more
Microlensing Study Suggests Most Common Outer Planets Likely Neptune-mass

New species found near ocean floor hot springs

Carbonaceous chondrites shed light on the origins of life in the universe

NASA Engineers Test Combustion Chamber to Advance 3-D Printed Rocket Engine Design
Recent tests of a developmental rocket engine at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, produced all the performance data engineers were hoping for, along with the traditional fire and roar. But this engine is anything but traditional. Marshall engineers are designing each of the components from scratch to ultimately be made entirely by additive manufacturing, or 3-D p ... more
Ultra-Cold Storage - Liquid Hydrogen may be Fuel of the Future

Technical glitch postpones NASA satellite launch

After glitch, NASA satellite launch set for Wednesday



Chinese missile giant seeks 20% of a satellite market
China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp, the largest missile maker in the country, is taking aim at 20 percent or more of the small-satellite launch contracts in the world by 2020, company executives said. "We estimate that from 2017 to 2020, we will send aloft at least 10 solid-fuel carrier rockets each year, to send about 50 small satellites into orbit," said Guo Yong, president of the ... more
China-made satellites in high demand

Space exploration plans unveiled

China launches 4th data relay satellite

Where is the Ice on Ceres
At first glance, Ceres, the largest body in the main asteroid belt, may not look icy. Images from NASA's Dawn spacecraft have revealed a dark, heavily cratered world whose brightest area is made of highly reflective salts - not ice. But newly published studies from Dawn scientists show two distinct lines of evidence for ice at or near the surface of the dwarf planet. Researchers are presen ... more
Ceres Offers Insight Into Prospects For Life in Early Solar System

Rosetta's last words: science descending to a comet

Ceres: Water ice in eternal polar night



Northrop Grumman to develop next-gen fighter laser system
Northrop Grumman will help the U.S. Air Force to develop a directed energy laser system that will offer self-protection for the service's next-generation jets, the company announced Wednesday. The work, under an Air Force Research Laboratory contract, will see Northrop Grumman develop and produce the beam control piece of an airborne laser weapon demonstration array that the laboratory ... more
UK to start laser gun program

Russia's Ray Guns: The Military Capability of Moscow's Secret Laser Weapons

US Navy keeps electromagnetic cannon in its sights

U.S. Air Force approves Lockheed Martin's SBIRS ground system
The U.S. Air Force has signed off on Lockheed Martin's planned Space Based Infrared System ground system. The Space Based Infrared System, or SBIRS, is a component of the branch's satellite constellation responsible for compiling large amounts of data for defense and intelligence reports. Lockheed Martin officials say the upcoming upgrades will make the constellation more effective. ... more
Raytheon to provide Patriot missile capability for undisclosed country

Saudis intercept missile fired from Yemen

US general says missile system in S. Korea in 8-10 months



Saturn's bulging core implies moons younger than thought
Freshly harvested data from NASA's Cassini mission reveals that the ringed planet's moons may be younger than previously thought. "All of these Cassini mission measurements are changing our view of the Saturnian system, as it turns our old theories upside down," said Radwan Tajeddine, Cornell University research associate in astronomy and a member of the European-based Encelade scientific team t ... more
Cassini Makes First Ring-Grazing Plunge

Cassini Beams Back First Images from New Orbit

NASA Saturn Mission Prepares for 'Ring-Grazing Orbits'

Nanocubes simplify printing and imaging in color and infrared
Duke University researchers believe they have overcome a longstanding hurdle to producing cheaper, more robust ways to print and image across a range of colors extending into the infrared. As any mantis shrimp will tell you, there are a wide range of "colors" along the electromagnetic spectrum that humans cannot see but which provide a wealth of information. Sensors that extend into the in ... more
New aspect of atom mimicry for nanotechnology applications

ANU demonstrates 'ghost imaging' with atoms

Supersonic spray yields new nanomaterial for bendable, wearable electronics



LISA Pathfinder's pioneering mission continues
On 7 December, LISA Pathfinder started the extended phase of its mission, an additional six months during which scientists and engineers will push the experiment to its limits in preparation for ESA's future space observatory of gravitational waves. LISA Pathfinder, a demonstration mission to validate important technologies to observe gravitational waves - fluctuations in the fabric of spacetime ... more
Magnetic mirror could shed new light on gravitational waves

A population of neutron stars can generate gravitational waves continuously

Verlindes new theory of gravity passes first test

Number of known black holes expected to double in two years with new detection method
Researchers from the University of Waterloo have developed a method that will detect roughly 10 black holes per year, doubling the number currently known within two years, and it will likely unlock the history of black holes in a little more than a decade. Avery Broderick, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Waterloo, and Mansour Karami, a PhD studen ... more
Spinning black hole swallowing star explains superluminous event

Blocks of ice demonstrate levitated and directed motion

High-tech glass plates to be used to discover the birth of new black holes

Daily Newsletters - Space - Military - Environment - Energy

A hardware-based approach for real world collaborative multi-robots
Technological revolution means robots no longer are the song of the future. The Governor of the Bank of England predicts today that up to half of British workforce face redundancy in the imminent 'second machine age'. No wonder, the research of multi-robot systems generates serious buzz both for promising (albeit at times scary) results and for their application prospects in the real world. ... more
A skillful rescue robot with remote-control function

Zuckerberg builds software butler for his home

Artificial intelligence creeps into daily life

Malawi drone test centre to help with healthcare, disasters
Malawi on Thursday launched Africa's first drone-testing corridor as developing countries explore how drones could be used during humanitarian crises such as floods, or to deliver blood for HIV tests. The project, which will cover up to 40 kilometres (25 miles) around the administrative capital Lilongwe, will be fully operational by April in a collaboration between Malawi and UNICEF. "Ou ... more
Amazon completes its first drone delivery, in England

MBDA's Brimstone missile planned for Britain's Protector drone

Britain signs off on General Atomics' Protector program



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