Don’t get spooked by Saturn’s ghostly spokes! Today we feature a nearly two-hour timelapse of Saturn and its rings looping forwards and backwards. A day on Saturn is only 10 hours long, so two hours of observation covers quite a bit of its rotation. If you look closely, a ghoulish shadow appears and disappears as Saturn’s B ring rotates. Decades of observation with Voyager 2, Cassini, and Hubble show the appearance of Saturn’s spokes varies with the planet’s seasons. Like Earth, Saturn’s spin axis is tilted compared to the plane of its orbit around the Sun. During Saturn’s equinox, the rings are less tilted away from the Sun and the planet receives more evenly distributed sunlight and solar wind. Although their origin is still uncertain, Saturn’s spokes may be shadows of and reflections off of dust and ice levitating above the rings caused by electromagnetic interactions between the solar wind and the planet’s magnetic field. Find dark skies and look up this August to witness the Perseid meteor shower uninhibited by the Moon!
Estos días hemos tenido problemas con el proveedor de internet, por eso la página web permaneció ina...
La empresa china LandSpace ha alcanzado un importante hito al completar con éxito una prueba de ence...
En un movimiento histórico, las gigantes europeas Airbus, Leonardo y Thales han anunciado la creac...
SAN FRANCISCO – The National Reconnaissance Office has awarded contracts to Capella Space, Iceye U.S. and Umbra to expand the U.S. government’s use of commercial synthetic aperture radar (SAR). The […] The post Capella, Iceye and Umbra win NRO radar-data contracts appeared first on SpaceNews.
Another wave of constellations has staked claims for communications satellites in non-geostationary orbit (NGSO), but what hope do newcomers have alongside the industry’s entrenched, vertically integrated giants? A mix of […] The post Finding room in Starlink’s shadow appeared first on SpaceNews.
The mood was celebratory at the ribbon-cutting for Muon Space’s San Jose, California, manufacturing facility in June. State, local, United States Space Force and Pentagon representatives lauded the startup and, […] The post Satellite manufacturing thrives in California despite cost and regulatory pressures appeared first on SpaceNews.
Europe risks becoming dependent on foreign orbital computing infrastructure as U.S. companies and China’s government-led push accelerate the development of space-based data centers, according to the European Space Policy Institute. The post Think tank warns Europe’s orbital compute gap is widening appeared first on SpaceNews.
Neuraspace, the Portuguese space traffic management startup, announced around $18 million in fresh funding Aug. 5 to expand European space domain awareness and defense capabilities. The post Neuraspace raises $18 million to expand sovereign space awareness appeared first on SpaceNews.
Voyager Technologies remains upbeat about the prospects for its Starlab commercial space station but is hoping for some tweaks to NASA’s plans to support the station’s development. The post Voyager seeks relaxed requirements in NASA commercial space station RFP appeared first on SpaceNews.
