🦞🌯 Lobster Roll

Space technology is serving at the heart of the French Open. The tennis players’ showers at Roland Garros Stadium near Paris recycle their water to flush the locker room toilets, harnessing technology originally developed by ESA for astronauts on long-duration space missions, and employed operationa...

On December 6 local time (December 5 in the United States), Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa2 dropped a capsule to the ground of the Australian Outback from about 120 miles (or 200 kilometers) above Earth’s surface. Inside that capsule is some of the most precious cargo in the solar system: dust that th...

An astronaut aboard the International Space Station (ISS) took this photograph of a 30-kilometer (20-mile) long lagoon on the eastern shore of Tunisia. A narrow sand bar separates it from the Mediterranean Sea. The small town of Al Marsá appears as a slightly darker zone at the head of the lagoon. T...

Three New Bacterial Strains Discovered on International Space Station May Help Grow Plants on Mars In order to withstand the rigors of space on deep-space missions, food grown outside of Earth needs a little extra help from bacteria. Now, a recent discovery aboard the International Space Station (IS...

Archaeologists have initiated a first-of-its-kind study aboard the International Space Station to analyze astronaut interaction with their surroundings, using daily photos to track changes and usage within taped-off areas. A world-first – or solar system-first – archaeological project has this week ...

The NASA-funded experiment will test two technologies that could eventually enable quantum computers to communicate with each other no matter where they are located. A tiny experiment launching to the International Space Station later this year could set the stage for a future global quantum network...

ATHENA, a new electrospray propulsion system by ESA and IENAI Space, offers innovative, scalable propulsion for small satellites, with the final product expected by next year. A palm-sized propulsion option for future space missions: each one of these seven emitter arrays etched onto this silicon wa...

Scientists have discovered strike-slip faults on the icy moons of our solar system, similar to those seen at the San Andreas fault in California. These faults occur when fault walls slide sideways past each other. New research from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, led by earth and space scientist...

Discrepancies found between intended and actual use of certain areas aboard the space station. Using daily photos to study the International Space Station, researchers have discovered that astronauts use the space differently from its intended design. The study highlights areas where everyday items ...

The inaugural space archaeological survey on the ISS reveals how astronauts adapt their living and working spaces, offering insights for future space habitat designs and demonstrating the versatility of archaeological methods in extreme environments. The first archaeological survey conducted in spac...

Human-made objects on Mars, including spacecraft, landers, and rovers, may hold significant archaeological value rather than being dismissed as space debris. Scholars propose cataloging and preserving these artifacts to document humanity’s early interplanetary exploration and ensure future missions ...

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over the green algae blooms swirling around the Baltic Sea. ‘Algae bloom’ is the term used to describe the rapid multiplying of phytoplankton – microscopic marine plants that drift on or near the surface of the sea. The chlorophyll that phytopla...

Used in refrigeration and HVAC systems around the world, current cooling technology has plateaued in both efficiency and environmental impact. An international research team led by the University of Maryland has developed a novel elastocaloric cooling material that is highly efficient, eco-friendly,...

This Copernicus Sentinel-2 image features an area in the Santa Cruz Department of Bolivia, where part of the tropical dry forest has been cleared for agricultural use. Since the 1980s, the area has been rapidly deforested owing to a large agricultural development effort where people from the Andean ...

World Wetlands Day is celebrated internationally each year on 2 February. It marks the anniversary of the signing of the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance, known as the Ramsar Convention, in Ramsar, Iran, on February 2, 1971. World Wetlands Day raises global awareness about the vita...

For Valentine’s Day, we bring you this Copernicus Sentinel-2 image capturing a beautiful heart-shaped geographical formation in the dramatic landscape of the southern highlands of Bolivia. The highlands are part of the Altiplano, meaning High Plateau, a region that stretches almost 1000 km from Peru...

Bacteria on the International Space Station no more dangerous than earthbound strains. Two particularly tenacious species of bacteria have colonized the potable water dispenser aboard the International Space Station (ISS), but a new study suggests that they are no more dangerous than closely related...

Some species of deaf moths can absorb as much as 85 percent of the incoming sound energy from predatory bats — who use echolocation to detect them. The findings, published in Royal Society Interface on February 25, 2020, reveal the moths, who are unable to hear the ultrasonic calls of bats, have evo...

Dutch shipbuilder Royal Huisman applied the same concurrent engineering process developed by ESA for space missions to the design of superyacht Sea Eagle II, due to become the world’s largest aluminum sailing yacht when delivered to its owner this spring. This uniquely contemporary 81 m-long (266 ft...

Two-day notice lets satellite operators take protective measures against energetic electrons. A new machine-learning computer model accurately predicts damaging radiation storms caused by the Van Allen belts two days prior to the storm, the most advanced notice to date, according to a new paper in t...

A recent study supported in part by the NASA Astrobiology Program provides new data on meteoritic materials that could have originated from primitive bodies in the Solar System. Researchers used a suite of analyses to study carbon-containing compounds in a xenolithic clast of the Zag (H5) meteorite,...

The Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission takes us over part of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Most of the archipelago is part of Nunavut – the largest and northernmost territory of Canada. The archipelago covers an area of around 1,500,000 sq km (580,000 sq mi) and consists of 94 major islands and more t...

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over Kuwait in the Middle East. With a total area of around 17,800 sq km (6,880 sq mi), Kuwait is considered one of the smallest countries in the world. At its most distant points, it is around 200 km (124 mi) north to south and 170 km (106 mi)east [...]

Study by the Universities of Bonn and Harvard raises doubts about basic assumption for the universe. No matter where we look, the same rules apply everywhere in space: countless calculations of astrophysics are based on this basic principle. A recent study by the Universities of Bonn and Harvard, ho...

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over Victoria Falls – one of the world’s greatest natural wonders. Victoria Falls, known locally as Mosi-oa Tunya or ‘the smoke that thunders,’ lies along the course of the Zambezi River, on the border between Zambia to the north and Zimbabwe to the south. ...

Have you ever wondered what kind of rocks make up those bright and dark splotches on the moon? Well, the USGS has just released a new authoritative map to help explain the 4.5-billion-year-old history of our nearest neighbor in space. For the first time, the entire lunar surface has been completely ...