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Observations from EU satellites are being used to help predict air quality in China as part of a new comprehensive forecast system.
Remember Gravity, the 2013 Sandra Bullock and George Clooney film where a space debris chain reaction destroys the International Space Station?
Space farming is difficult business – plants don’t grow well in zero gravity and harsh radiation damages seeds – but if researchers can get it right, it could provide food, clean water, and oxygen for manned missions far from earth.
A space sensor unit that bears an uncanny resemblance to the head of a Transformer could cut the cost of interplanetary missions.
It isn’t easy to spot planets far away in our galaxy – normally we can only infer their presence, from the effect they have on their host stars. But now a group of astronomers has demonstrated an easier way to study distant worlds, by detecting the first visible light reflected off an exoplanet.
Astrophysicists in Germany are piecing together the final parts of a map that will help tell us whether the Milky Way suffered a massive collision with another galaxy, billions of years ago.
A human centrifuge is helping turn back the clock on space-ageing – the process by which six months away from earth can make your body seem 20 years older.
Orbiting observatories and advances in solar physics are producing the first forecasts of weather in space, and better predictions could help protect frequent flyers, electricity grids and an expanding fleet of satellites.
Researchers are preparing for missions to capture asteroids and bring them closer to the earth, where they could one day be mined and even provide a source of fuel for interplanetary spacecraft.
The Philae probe landing on comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko on 12 November was awe-inspiring, but the main science phase of Rosetta is yet to come, said Dr Colin Snodgrass, the coordinator of the mission’s ground-based observation campaign and lead scientist on the EU-funded ISANDAL project, speaking from the European Southern Observatory in Chile.
Floating research laboratories are reaching the fringes of space.
Automated and connected devices can save lives.
Ending flu pandemics and winter outbreaks in a single shot.
EU firms should be brought within ‘innovation ecosystems’ to develop breakthrough technology, according to Prof. Luke Georghiou.
‘Lean’ farming could reduce waste.
Science is currently undergoing a revolution thanks to a new approach to the scientific process based on openness, inclusiveness and cooperation, known as Open Science.
