HOUSTON (NASA PR) — A new crew is gearing up to participate in NASA’s next simulated mission to Mars. Crew members will soon enter the Human Exploration Research Analog, or HERA, at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Once inside HERA, they will live and work like astronauts for 45 days while “traveling” to the Martian moon Phobos.
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VANDENBERG SPACE FORCE BASE, Calif. (NASA PR) — NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), the world’s first full-scale mission to test technology for defending Earth against potential asteroid or comet hazards, launched Wednesday at 1:21 a.m. EST on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
Just one part of NASA’s larger planetary defense strategy, DART – built and managed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland – will impact a known asteroid that is not a threat to Earth. Its goal is to slightly change the asteroid’s motion in a way that can be accurately measured using ground-based telescopes.
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PARIS (ESA PR) — ESA Director General Jan Wörner and President of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Dr Hiroshi Yamakawa took part in an online bilateral meeting on 4 February, confirming the status of cooperative activities between the two agencies.
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KAISERLAUTERN, Germany (ESA PR) — It’s 4 October 1957, and the Soviet Union has just lofted humanity’s first satellite – Sputnik 1 – into the pristine orbital environment around Earth, marking the start of the Space Age.
Throughout 1960s and 70s, launches quickly increase, as the USA, Soviet Union and other countries race for space, discovering and utilising the immense value of the ‘orbital pathways’ above us – a precious, limited natural resource.
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ELCHE, Spain (EMXYS PR) — EMXYS and the Royal Observatory of Belgium have been selected by the European Space Agency to provide a gravimeter for the Juventas spacecraft that will land on asteroid Dimorphos as part of the European Space Agency’s planetary defence programme.
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PARIS (ESA PR) — The team behind ESA’s Hera asteroid mission for planetary defence congratulates JAXA for returning Hayabusa2’s capsule to Earth laden with pristine asteroid samples. They look forward to applying insights from this audacious space adventure to their own mission.
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PARIS, 15 September 2020 (ESA PR) — Today ESA awarded a €129.4 million contract covering the detailed design, manufacturing and testing of Hera, the Agency’s first mission for planetary defence. This ambitious mission will be Europe’s contribution to an international asteroid deflection effort, set to perform sustained exploration of a double asteroid system.
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LUXEMBOURG (GomSpace PR) — GomSpace Luxembourg SARL and the European Space Agency (ESA), today signed a contract to continue development and implementation of the Juventas CubeSat in support of the Hera mission.
The contract value is approximately EUR 11,000,000, focused on delivery of the Juventas spacecraft and its associated payloads for launch with Hera in 2024. The amount will be divided between several partners, whereof GomSpace share is about EUR 6,100,000.
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by Jeremy Rehm
Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory
LAUREL, Md. — In the fall of 2022, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft will reach its destination: asteroid Didymos and its small moonlet, named Dimorphos.
(more…)BREMEN, Germany (OHB System PR) — OHB System AG, a subsidiary of Bremen-based space and technology group OHB SE (Prime Standard, ISIN DE0005936124), has been selected by the European Space Agency ESA as the prime contractor for the CO2M mission (CO2 Monitoring Mission in the Copernicus program). This mission includes the Copernicus satellites, which will measure global anthropogenic CO2 emissions and thus play a key role in studying the causes […]
