News by Subject Space & Planetary

New research led by Curtin University has revealed how radar satellites can improve the ability to detect, monitor, prepare for and withstand natural disasters in Australia including bushfires, floods and earthquakes.

On May 1, 2019, researchers observed a record-setting flare from the star Proxima Centauri--a burst of energy roughly 100 times more powerful than any similar event seen from Earth's sun.

Scientists have found fragments of titanium blasting out of a famous supernova. This discovery, made with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, could be a major step in pinpointing exactly how some giant stars explode.

Monitoring environmental compliance is a particular challenge for governments in poor countries. A new machine learning approach that uses satellite imagery to pinpoint highly polluting brick kilns in Bangladesh could provide a low-cost solution. (Watch video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHvRgKmJOK8)

A team of scientists used a telescope on the International Space Station to measure the size of PSR J0740+6620 (J0740, for short), the most massive known neutron star. NASA's Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) has captured unprecedented detail from this stellar remnant to learn more about matter in its core, which is on the threshold of collapsing into a black hole.

Scientists from the Skoltech Space Center (SSC) have developed nanosatellite interaction algorithms for scientific measurements using a tetrahedral orbital formation of CubeSats that exchange data and apply interpolation algorithms to create local maps of physical measurements in real time. The study presents an example of geomagnetic field measurement, which shows that these data can be used by other satellites for attitude control and, therefore, provided on a data-as-a-service basis.

While attention has been focused on the Perseverance rover that landed on Mars last month, its predecessor Curiosity continues to explore the base of Mount Sharp on the red planet and is still making discoveries.

The Perseverance rover has just landed on Mars. Meanwhile, its precursor Curiosity continues to explore the base of Mount Sharp at the centre of the Gale crater. Using the ChemCam instrument to make detailed observations of the steep terrain of Mount Sharp at a distance, a French-US team headed by CNRS researcher William Rapin has discovered that the Martian climate alternated between dry and wetter periods, before drying up completely about 3 billion years ago.