JUST IN:
NASA released an infrared tour of Jupiter’s North Pole on Wednesday, April 11.
The 3D movie depicts the densely packed cyclones and anti-cyclones on the planet, according to NASA.
Data collected by Juno mission scientists using the Jovian InfraRed Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument, helped generate the animation. JIRAM records the light from deep inside Jupiter, whether it is night or day.
ESA’s Mars Express orbiter is getting a major software upgrade that will extend its service life for years to come. On Sunday, the space agency uploaded the update into the veteran deep space probe’s computers where it will remain stored in memory until a scheduled restart on April 16. If successful, it will take some of the burden off the aging gyroscopes used to keep the unmanned spacecraft’s vital high-gain radio antenna pointed at Earth.
As anyone who regularly uses digital devices can tell you, software updates are a way of life. It turns out that Mars orbiting spacecraft are no exception, with aging electronics that need new instructions to deal with worn out components after years of heavy use.
Mars Express is one of the oldest still-functioning missions to the Red Planet. Launched on June 2, 2003 atop a Soyuz-FG rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, the orbiter arrived at Mars on December 25 of that year. Since then, it has spent 14 years revolving about Mars taking photographs and gathering a mountain of scientific data to send back to mission control in Darmstadt, Germany.
The University of Nebraska College of Law is joining forces with space and military law experts from Australia and the United Kingdom to take the lead on understanding how our Earth-bound laws will be applied in times of armed conflict in outer space.
Some of the best legal and policy minds at the University of Adelaide, UNSW Canberra, University of Exeter and Nebraska Law will draft the definitive document on military and security law as applied to space.
The Woomera Manual on the International Law of Military Space Operations is to be completed in 2020. It will draw on the knowledge of dozens of legal and space operations experts from around the world.
Measuring the structure of antimatter could help us unlock the secrets of the universe.
Wow, I would love to stay here!
The Aurora Station, the “world’s first luxury space hotel,” orbiting 200 miles above the earth, is looking for guests.
Courtesy
There’s a place you can go on vacation where the sun rises and sets 16 times a day, the stars are clearer than you’ve ever seen, and there are only a handful of people around for miles and miles…hundreds of miles, in fact.
Posted in space
We’re never short of reasons to look up at the night sky — whether it’s the rare second blue moon we were just treated to, or a meteor shower.
But in case you need a little motivation to get out of the house and into the fresh air this month, we have a beautiful one for you: checking out the ever-changing celestial geometry above our heads.
This April, the gas giant Jupiter forms a rare and fleeting triangle with two bright stars in our night sky, and it’ll be visible with the naked eye if you know where to look.
Imagine driving and being warned when you’re too close to the edge of the road.
That’s exactly what space technology developed by German researchers can do, and it could be in Northland trucks in the next year.
Researchers from the German Aerospace Agency have been in Whangarei with the Intelligent Positioning System, which has been designed to navigate the rover on Mars.
