Category Astronomy/Space

With 2D cameras and space robotics algorithms, astronautics engineers have created a navigation system able to manage multiple satellites using visual data only. They just tested it in space for the first time.

Someday, instead of large, expensive individual space satellites, teams of smaller satellites — known by scientists as a “swarm” — will work in collaboration, enabling greater accuracy, agility, and autonomy. Among the scientists working to make these teams a reality are researchers at Stanford University’s Space Rendezvous Lab, who recently completed the first-ever in-orbit test of a prototype system able to navigate a swarm of satellites using only visual information shared through a wireless network.

“It’s a milestone paper and the culmination of 11 years of effort by ...

Webb telescope data indicate a complex history for the metallic asteroid. Using data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, a Southwest Research Institute-led team has confirmed hydroxyl molecules on the surface of the metallic asteroid Psyche...

Using seismic activity to probe the interior of Mars, geophysicists have found evidence for a large underground reservoir of liquid water—enough to fill oceans on the planet’s surface.

The data from NASA’s Insight lander allowed the scientists to estimate that the amount of groundwater could cover the entire planet to a depth of between 1 and 2 kilometers, or about a mile.