China testing own reusable rocket technologies
Beijing (XNA) Apr 25, 2016 -
China is working on its own reusable rocket technologies, a source close to the research told Xinhua Thursday.
Chinese experts have already built a prototype model to test theories on the reusable rocket booster's landing subsystems. They have completed "experimental verifications" using "multiple parachutes" supposedly attached to the booster, a source with China Academy of Launch Vehicle ...
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150 Long March rocket launches scheduled 2016-2020
Beijing (XNA) Apr 25, 2016 -
China will launch about 150 of its Long March carrier rockets over the next five years, one of its space chiefs said on Friday, days ahead of celebrations marking the launch of the country's first satellite 46 years ago.
"In the 13th Five-Year Plan period [2016-2020], we will see about 30 launches [of the Long March series] each year," Chen Xuechuan, assistant president of China Aerospace ...
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Herschel captures galactic panorama of the Milky Way
Paris (ESA) Apr 25, 2016 -
This new video from ESA's Herschel space observatory reveals in stunning detail the intricate pattern of gas, dust and star-forming hubs along the plane of our Galaxy, the Milky Way.
Against the diffuse background of the interstellar material, a wealth of bright spots, wispy filaments and bubbling nebulas emerge, marking the spots where stars are being born in the Galaxy.
The video w ...
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Kepler spacecraft recovered and returned to the K2 Mission
Moffett Field CA (SPX) Apr 25, 2016 -
The Kepler spacecraft has been recovered and, as of 8:30 a.m. PDT today, it is back on the job as the K2 mission searching for exoplanets - planets beyond our solar system.
The team began the process of returning the spacecraft to science late on Tuesday. The process involved a succession of steps over the course of the next two days. The pointing tables and science targets - instructions ...
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British astronaut Tim Peaks ran London Marathon from space
London (UPI) Apr 24, 2016 -
In an out-of-this-world feat, British astronaut Tim Peake competed in his own version of the London Marathon on Sunday.
Peake completed 26.2 miles strapped into a harness attached to a treadmill aboard the International Space Station in 3:35:21. In 1999, he completed the distance on the ground in 3:18:50.
The 44-year-old astronaut's conditions were much different than the approxi ...
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Cosmic beacons reveal the Milky Way's ancient core
Potsdam, Germany (SPX) Apr 25, 2016 -
An international team of astronomers led by Dr. Andrea Kunder of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) in Germany has discovered that the central 2,000 light-years within the Milky Way galaxy hosts an ancient population of stars. These stars are more than 10 billion years old and their orbits in space preserve the early history of the formation of the Milky Way.
For the firs ...
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Dark matter does not contain certain axion-like particles
Stockholm, Sweden (SPX) Apr 25, 2016 -
Researchers at Stockholm University are getting closer to corner light dark-matter particle models. Observations can rule out some axion-like particles in the quest for the content of dark matter. The article is now published in the Physical Review Letters.
Physicists are still struggling with the conundrum of identifying more than 80 percent of the matter in the Universe. One possibility ...
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