Falcon 9 went vertical at SLC-40 early this morning ahead of today’s targeted launch of the ESA Euclid mission; weather is currently 90% favorable for liftoff at 15:12 UTC → http://spacex.com/launches

NASA's MOXIE instrument extracts double the expected oxygen in new test

NASA's Mars Perseverance rover has far surpassed its previous record for extracting oxygen from the Red Planet's thin atmosphere.

The rover's Mars Oxygen in Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) achieved the impressive new milestone earlier this month.

In a new test, NASA was able to double the MOXIE experiment's previous oxygen production level. The new milestone could prove to be a crucial step toward eventual human exploration of the Red Planet.

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Success! Euclid is on its way to L2 where it will begin calibrating and eventually collecting data. Meanwhile it will start turning on and checking its instruments.

We will continue with coverage of the science involved here so stay tuned!

Check out:
• Launch and landing videos
• Photo of the team
• Interesting detail
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Euclid's journey to L2

In the next four weeks, Euclid will travel towards Sun-Earth Lagrange point 2, an equilibrium point of the Sun-Earth system located 1.5 million km from Earth (about four times the Earth-Moon distance) in the direction opposite from the Sun. There, Euclid will be manoeuvred into orbit around this point and mission controllers will start the activities to verify all the functions of the spacecraft, check out the telescope and finally turn on the scientific instruments.

Scientists and engineers will then be engaged in an intense two-month phase of testing and calibrating Euclid’s scientific instruments and preparing for routine observations. Over six years Euclid will survey one third of the sky with unprecedented accuracy and sensitivity.

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Maximising science

To achieve its ambitious scientific goal, Euclid is equipped with a 1.2 m reflecting telescope that feeds the two innovative scientific instruments: VIS, which takes very sharp images of galaxies over a large fraction of the sky, and NISP, which can analyse galaxies’ infrared light by wavelength to accurately establish their distance.

The spacecraft and communications will be controlled from ESOC. To cope with the vast amounts of data Euclid will acquire, ESA’s Estrack network of deep space antennas has been upgraded. These data will be analysed by the Euclid Consortium – a group of more than 2000 scientists from more than 300 institutes across Europe, the US, Canada and Japan.

As the mission progresses, Euclid’s treasure trove of data will be released with yearly cadence and will be accessible to the global scientific community.

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Thruster burn complete🔥! ESA Euclid is on its way to Lagrange point 2

It'll take a month to get there. #DarkUniverse, we'll soon be turning on the lights
Source: @esaoperations

NASA Seals Volunteers Into Isolated Habitat For Year-Long Experiment

On June 25, 2023, a crew of four volunteers entered a simulated Martian habitat, from which they will not emerge for over a year. Their mission: to learn more about the logistics – and the human psychology – of living long-term on another planet, without ever leaving the ground.

The mission is called CHAPEA (Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog) and is the first of three planned simulations between now and 2026, each of which will teach scientists progressively more about what it takes for long-duration human spaceflight to succeed.

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Norway discovers massive underground deposit of high-grade phosphate rock

Big enough to satisfy world demand for fertilisers, solar panels and electric car batteries over the next 100 years.

Now that the exploration phase is over, Norge Mining is looking to move the project on to the next stage of mining production.

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Time Appears to Have Run 5 Times Slower in The Early Universe

Because of a peculiar effect velocity has on the appearance of the passage of time, our observations make it seem like time ran slower when the Universe was young.

At least, that's how it appears to us, at a light travel time of nearly 13 billion years away. This is called time dilation, and astrophysicist Geraint Lewis and statistician Brendon Brewer have seen it in the early Universe for the first time by studying the fluctuations of bright galaxies called quasar galaxies during the Cosmic Dawn.

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Superconductor Breakthrough Replicated, Twice, in Preliminary Testing

Initially published by a Korean team last Friday, frantic work is underway throughout the research world to validate the paper's claims. For now, two separate sources have already provided preliminary confirmations that this might actually be the real thing.

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ESA’s Euclid Spacecraft Snaps Its First Test Images

Euclid, built and operated by ESA, with contributions from NASA, will observe billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light-years to create the largest, most accurate 3D map of the Universe, with the third dimension representing time itself.

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Exposure to Certain Fragrances During Sleep Dramatically Boosts Cognitive Function

Researchers at the University of California, Irvine recently uncovered strong evidence that enriching the air with fragrances improves cognitive performance by strengthening a critical connection between neurological areas involving memory and decision-making.

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NASA back in touch with Voyager 2 after 'interstellar shout'

The Deep Space Network used the highest-power transmitter to send the command (the 100-kw S-band uplink from the Canberra site) and timed it to be sent during the best conditions during the antenna tracking pass in order to maximize possible receipt of the command by the spacecraft.

The probe began returning science and telemetry data at 12:29 am Eastern Time on August 4, "indicating it is operating normally and that it remains on its expected trajectory."

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