Image of the Interact Rover, one of the remote-operated vehicles used in the Surface Avatar experiments. Credit – ESA The European Space Agency has been hosting a series of robotic teleoperation experiments where an astronaut abroad the ISS controls a robot back on the ground. We’ve previously reported on some of their successes. Now it’s time for the next round ...
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ESA Can’t Deploy JUICE’s Radar Antenna. It Needs It to Scan Under the Ice at Callisto, Europa, and Ganymede
In a scene eerily reminiscent of the Galileo spacecraft’s antenna issues, ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) is having a problem with an antenna. The 16-meter-long radar Radar for Icy Moons Exploration (RIME) unit is stuck on a tiny pin that’s keeping it from deploying fully. The spacecraft teams are working to get the antenna freed, and it appears that ...
Read More »European Satellite Measures Exactly How Much Ice Has Been Lost from Glaciers
ESA’s Earth Explorer CryoSat mission is dedicated to precise monitoring of changes in the thickness of marine ice floating in the polar oceans and variations in the thickness of the vast ice sheets that blanket Greenland and Antarctica. Its data are being used to measure ice loss in glaciers. Courtesy ESA/AOES Medialab As global warming heats up our atmosphere a ...
Read More »Juice Looks Back at Earth During Its Space Odyssey to Jupiter’s Moons
The Horn of Africa and the Gulf of Aden are prominent in this Earth snapshot from the JMC1 camera on the European Space Agency’s Juice probe, captured a half-hour after launch on April 14. Credit: ESA / Juice / JMC, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO As the European Space Agency’s Juice spacecraft headed out on an eight-year trip to Jupiter’s icy ...
Read More »ESA’s Juice is On Its Way to Visit Jupiter’s Moons
A new era of exploration at Jupiter’s moons began last week with the launch of the European Space Agency’s Juice, the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer. This mission will visit three of Jupiter’s largest moons — Europa, Callisto and Ganymede — to investigate whether they could be potentially habitable, a question that’s been highly debated since the first evidence of subsurface ...
Read More »Low Gravity Simulator Lets You Jump Around in Lunar Gravity
When the Apollo astronauts landed on the Moon, they had to perform tasks in 1/6th of Earth’s gravity. At first, walking and working in this low gravity environment posed some challenges. However, the astronauts soon adapted and figured out that hopping like a bunny made it easier to get around. The Artemis astronauts will also need to adapt to life ...
Read More »Determining the Mass of the Milky Way Using Hypervelocity Stars
For centuries, astronomers have been looking beyond our Solar System to learn more about the Milky Way Galaxy. And yet, there are still many things about it that elude us, such as knowing its precise mass. Determining this is important to understanding the history of galaxy formation and the evolution of our Universe. As such, astronomers have attempted various techniques ...
Read More »ExoMars is Back on Track for Mars in 2028
The ExoMars Rover mission is back on track for its mission to Mars, but Russia won’t be a part of it this time. Following Russia’s disastrous invasion of neighbouring Ukraine in February 2022, the ESA suspended the ExoMars program. Now, the mission is targeted for a 2028 launch to Mars without Russian involvement. In anticipation of that launch date, the ...
Read More »The Best Way to Learn About Venus Could Be With a Fleet of Balloons
Interest in the exploration of Venus has kicked up a notch lately, especially after a contested recent discovery of phosphine, a potential biosignature, in the planet’s atmosphere. Plenty of missions to Venus have been proposed, and NASA and ESA have recently funded several. However, they are mainly orbiters, trying to peer into the planet’s interior from above. But they are ...
Read More »Want Artemis to Succeed? Virtual Reality Can Help
Artemis astronauts are returning to the Moon, and they’ll be following in Apollo’s footsteps when they go. But things are different this time. Not only is technology far more advanced, but so is the way we think about technology and how we design it. A new paper shows how two of modern technology’s offspring— virtual reality (VR) and user-centred design ...
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