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A major component of NASA?s Psyche spacecraft has been delivered to NASA?s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, where the phase known as assembly, test, and launch operations (ATLO) is now underway. This photo, shot March 28, 2021 shows engineers and technicians preparing to move the Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP) Chassis from its shipping container to a dolly in High Bay 1 of JPL?s Spacecraft Assembly Facility. The photo was captured just after the chassis was delivered to JPL by Maxar Technologies. Maxar?s team in Palo Alto, California, designed and built the SEP Chassis, which includes all the primary and secondary structure and the hardware components needed for the high-power electrical system, the propulsion system, the thermal system, guidance and navigation sensors and actuators, and the high-gain antenna. Over the next year, additional hardware will be added to the spacecraft including the command and data handling system, a power distribution assembly, the X-band telecommunications hardware suite, three science instruments (two imagers, two magnetometers, and a gamma ray neutron Spectrometer), and a deep space optical communications technology demonstrator. The spacecraft will finish assembly and then undergo rigorous checkout and testing before being shipped to NASA?s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, for an August 2022 launch to the main asteroid belt. Psyche will arrive at the metal-rich asteroid of the same name in 2026, orbiting for 21 months to investigate its composition. Scientists think that Psyche is made up of mostly iron and nickel ? similar to Earth?s core. Exploring the asteroid could give valuable insight into how our own planet and others formed. Arizona State University in Tempe leads the mission. JPL is responsible for the mission?s overall management, system engineering, integration and test, and mission operations. For more information about NASA?s Psyche mission, go to: http://www.nasa.gov/psyche or https://psyche.asu.edu/ Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Space

2022 preview: A round-up of the year's most exciting space missions

Around a dozen missions to the moon are scheduled in 2022, along with a rover landing on Mars and a spacecraft headed to in-vestigate the metal asteroid Psyche

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Hayabusa 2 near Ryugu

Space

Sample of asteroid Ryugu brought to Earth is a strange dark colour

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VAN HORN, TEXAS - JULY 20: Blue Origin???s New Shepard crew (L-R) Oliver Daemen, Mark Bezos, Jeff Bezos, and Wally Funk hold a press conference on July 20, 2021 in Van Horn, Texas. Mr. Bezos and the crew that flew with him were the first human spaceflight for the company. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Space

2021 in review: Space tourism begins – for billionaires, anyway

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On August 31, 2012 a long filament of solar material that had been hovering in the sun's atmosphere, the corona, erupted out into space at 4:36 p.m. EDT. The coronal mass ejection, or CME, traveled at over 900 miles per second. The CME did not travel directly toward Earth, but did connect with Earth's magnetic environment, or magnetosphere, causing aurora to appear on the night of Monday, September 3. Picuted here is a lighten blended version of the 304 and 171 angstrom wavelengths. Cropped Credit: NASA/GSFC/SDO NASA image use policy. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA???s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA???s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency???s mission. Follow us on Twitter Like us on Facebook Find us on Instagram

Space

Monster cloud of plasma spotted spewing out of a distant star

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James Leidner spent three nights in a high-tech sleeping bag that unloads pressure in the brain by suctioning fluids into the lower body. NASA hopes the sack can be used by astronauts in space to alleviate the vision problems they commonly endure during longer missions.

Space

High-tech space sleeping bag could stop vision problems in astronauts

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The IXPE mission

Space

NASA is launching X-ray telescope to study the science of black holes

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3 of the most exciting space telescopes planned for launch by 2034

Space

3 of the most exciting space telescopes planned for launch by 2034

Features

How the James Webb telescope will rewrite the story of the universe

Space

How the James Webb telescope will rewrite the story of the universe

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Newborn stars, hidden behind thick dust, are revealed in this image of a section of the so-called Christmas Tree Cluster from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The newly revealed infant stars appear as pink and red specks toward the center and appear to have formed in regularly spaced intervals along linear structures in a configuration that resembles the spokes of a wheel or the pattern of a snowflake. Hence, astronomers have nicknamed this the

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Sun-like stars may go through brighter phases as they grow up

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Planet Earth and Sun. Elements of this image furnished by NASA.

Space

Mysterious origin of Earth's water may be explained by solar wind

Evidence from asteroids shows that charged particles from the sun can turn dust grains into water – a process that could be useful for space exploration too

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Physics

Why does time only move forwards? Possibly just because we’re ignorant

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Space

Lost in Space-Time newsletter: Will a twisted universe save cosmology?

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Space

Earth may have grown around a rock from an alien star system

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Space

Tardigrades could survive interstellar travel in extreme hibernation

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