Can I ask how everyone personally feels about using nuclear material for space exploration? For the rovers heating elements it will be just a couple of grams but for generating electricity via a RTG a spacecraft would require several kilograms of radioactive material.

Researchers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope may have detected atmospheric gases surrounding 55 Cancri e, a hot rocky exoplanet 41 light-years from Earth. This is the best evidence to date for the existence of a rocky planet atmosphere outside our Solar System.

Fingers crossed that it's not affecting the mission objectives

A fresh, icy crust hides a deep, enigmatic ocean. Plumes of water burst through cracks in the ice, shooting into space. An intrepid lander collects samples and analyses them for hints of life.

ESA has started to turn this scene into a reality, devising a mission to investigate an ocean world around either Jupiter or Saturn. But which moon should we choose? What should the mission do exactly? A team of expert scientists has delivered their findings.

A newly devised procedure to de-ice Euclid's optics has performed significantly better than hoped. Light coming in to the visible ‘VIS’ instrument from distant stars was gradually decreasing due small amounts of water ice building up on its optics. Mission teams spent months devising a procedure to heat up individual mirrors in the instrument’s complex optical system, without interfering with the finely tuned mission’s calibration or potentially causing further contamination. After the very first mirror was warmed by just 34 degrees, Euclid's sight was restored.

Today, ESA’s Science Programme Committee approved the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission, the first scientific endeavour to detect and study gravitational waves from space.

This important step, formally called ‘adoption’, recognises that the mission concept and technology are sufficiently advanced, and gives the go-ahead to build the instruments and spacecraft. This work will start in January 2025 once a European industrial contractor has been chosen.

Die schlechte: Unsere Gasvorräte sind laut Zeit.de Dashboard aufgebraucht. Der CO2 Footprint des Festivals ist dieses Jahr dann auch leicht erhöht.... /s

Es ist ein Manöver, das die Satellitenspezialisten der Europäischen Raumfahrtagentur Esa im Kontrollzentrum in Darmstadt so noch nie geflogen sind: Erstmals soll ein Esa-Satellit, der nicht dafür konzipiert wurde, kontrolliert in die Erdatmosphäre gelenkt werden.

Die Raumfahrtagentur will so das Risiko verringern, dass Trümmerteile auf Landflächen stürzen. Außerdem soll die Gefahr verkleinert werden, dass der Satellit mit anderen Objekten in der Erdumlaufbahn kollidiert und so noch mehr Weltraumschrott entsteht.

TLDR: Extra Relaiskiste, neue Zertifizierung notwendig.

TLDR: Das externe Relay wird dann über Funk angesteuert. Lol