First crewed Starliner mission on track for April

The Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission will send NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the station on an eight-day mission, launching from Cape Canaveral and landing at White Sands, New Mexico. The mission, following a successful uncrewed flight to the ISS last May, is intended to be the final major test of the vehicle before NASA certifies it for use on ISS crew rotation missions.

Chance encounters: Mercury probe and sun spacecraft provide new info about Venus

Two probes — BepiColombo, headed to Mercury, and Solar Orbiter, en route to the sun — recently passed by Venus at nearly the same time, visiting Earth’s sister planet within a day of each other in August 2021. Their combined observations, recently published in the journal Nature Communications (opens in new tab), give astronomers a rare glimpse into the workings of Venus’ magnetic field.

World’s first space platforms utilising H2O2 in concentration above 98% – next level of green space propulsion

With 25 projects from the European Space Agency (ESA) since Poland’s accession to ESA 10 years ago, Łukasiewicz – Institute of Aviation became a R&D hot spot in space propulsion in Central-Eastern Europe. Completed and ongoing projects with key spacecraft integrators (i.e. Airbus Defence & Space, OHB and Thales Alenia Space), as well as established players in space transportation systems (i.e. ArianeGroup, Avio, Nammo) and major new space companies – the institute have the ultimate goal of bringing new components, technologies and subsystems to the international market.

Astronomers discover potential habitable exoplanet only 31 light-years from Earth

In a new study, a team of 50 astronomers from around the world have confirmed the existence of exoplanet Wolf 1069 b, which orbits a red dwarf star, Wolf 1069, only 31 light-years from Earth. What makes this discovery particularly intriguing is that Wolf 1069 b is potentially a rocky world, at about 1.26 the mass of Earth and 1.08 the size. Wolf 1069 b also orbits in its star’s habitable zone, making it a prime candidate for liquid water to potentially exist on its surface.