Over 40 nations and around 20 international organisations, including ESA, have come together in Brussels for two days, today and tomorrow, to exchange views on policies related to international cooperation in space.

Entitled ‘Winning through cooperation: sharing the benefits of space’, the conference provides a forum for discussion between States capable of providing space technology – the supply side – and those willing to make use of it – the demand side. The conference was joi

A particle accelerator operates in Earth’s upper atmosphere above major thunderstorms at energies comparable to some of the most exotic environments in the universe, according to new satellite observations of terrestrial gamma-ray flashes.

Terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (TGFs) are very short blasts of gamma rays, lasting about one millisecond, that are emitted into space from Earth’s upper atmosphere. The gamma rays are thought to be emitted by electrons traveling at n

Computer sims vital tools in exploring nanoworld

Years ago, when Uzi Landman and his colleagues set out to uncover some of the rules that govern why a non-reactive metal like gold acts as a catalyst when it is in nanoclusters only a few atoms in size, they didn’t sit down in a lab with the precious metal. Instead, they ran computer simulations and discovered that gold is a very effective catalyst when it is in clusters of eight to two dozen atoms. They also found that electrical ch

ESA’s SMART-1 mission was extended by one year, pushing back the mission end date from August 2005 to August 2006.

ESA’s Science Programme Committee endorsed unanimously the proposed one-year extension of SMART-1 on 10 February 2005. The extension by one year of the mission will provide opportunities to extend the global coverage, compared to the original six-month mission, and to map both southern and northern hemispheres at high resolution. The new orbit will also be more stab

Weight limits for biggest black holes confirmed

The very largest black holes reach a certain point and then grow no more. That’s according to the best survey to date of black holes made with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. Scientists also discovered previously hidden black holes well below their weight limit. These new results corroborate recent theoretical work about how black holes and galaxies grow. The biggest black holes, those with at least 100 million times th

Just as the static on an AM radio grows louder with the approach of a summer lightning storm, strong radio emissions accompany bright auroral spots — similar to Earth’s northern lights — on the planet Saturn, according to a research paper published in the Thursday, Feb. 17 issue of the journal Nature.

William Kurth, research scientist in the University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Department of Physics and Astronomy, says that the data was collected in early

Secrets of Saturn’s polar light show unveiled by BU-led team of astronomers

Aurora on Saturn behave in ways different from how scientists have thought possible for the last 25 years, according to new research by a team of astronomers led by John Clarke, a professor in BU’s Department of Astronomy and in the department’s Center for Space Physics. The team’s findings have overturned theories about how Saturn’s magnetosphere behaves and how its aurora are

After reaching its observational orbit around Mars a year ago, ESA’s Mars Express has already delivered an avalanche of scientific data of unprecedented quality that have completely changed the way in which we think about the Red Planet.

In order to compare views and discuss the implications of the new discoveries, over two hundred scientists will be attending the first Mars Express science conference, taking place from 21 to 25 February at ESA’s European Space Research and T

In future, the maintenance of, for example, wind turbines at sea, will be made easier and safer by a Delft invention, the ‘Ampelmann’, which compensated for swells at sea. Tests with scale models have shown that by mounting the working platform of maintenance ships on an Ampelmann, the platform will remain still and work can take place more efficiently. On Friday 18 February at TU Delft, the invention will be demonstrated to representatives of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the director of Sh

If you’re a ship captain and there might be 50-foot waves headed your way, you’d appreciate some information about them, right? That’s the idea behind a wave model system a Texas A&M University at Galveston professor has developed. His detailed wave prediction system is currently in use in the Gulf of Mexico and the Gulf of Maine.

Vijay Panchang, head of the Department of Maritime Systems Engineering, doesn’t make waves – he predicts what they’ll do, when

Visiting the Earth and Space Expo in Brussels is like nowhere else on Earth – you even take what seems like a walk through the sky to get inside! During the weekend upwards of 9000 visitors made the journey to experience a wide range of displays, interactive exhibits and breathtaking space-based views of our planet.

Those entering the Expo, at Autoworld in the Parc du Cinquantenaire, find that carefully placed mirrors on the floor, walls and ceiling give a sense of spacewalking

These images, taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, show the central part of the 4000-kilometre long Valles Marineris canyon on Mars.

The HRSC obtained these images during during orbits 334 and 360 with a resolution of approximately 21 metres per pixel for the earlier orbit and 30 metres per pixel for the latter.

The scenes show an area of approximately 300 by 600 kilometres and are taken from an image mosaic that was

“The Web will become more than what we see on our computer screens, it will become a place where computers interact with each other and where meaning is attached to information.” That is the vision behind a cutting-edge Semantic Web project.

For Richard Benjamins, the coordinator of the IST project ESPERONTO, the future of the Semantic Web lies in it becoming “something akin to ambient intelligence” with the meaning of digital information understandable not only by humans but by a

CSIRO’s radio telescopes and others in Australia, China, Japan and the USA have revealed how the wind speeds on Saturn’s moon Titan vary with altitude-and have turned a disappointment into a triumph.

As the Huygens probe plummeted through Titan’s atmosphere on 14 January it transmitted a stream of data to its parent Cassini spacecraft. The ground-based radio telescopes ’eavesdropped’ on the probe’s signal. As the probe was buffeted by Titan’s w

Scientists have produced an audio soundbite that captures what the Cassini orbiter heard from Huygens as the probe descended on Titan on Jan. 14.

The sounds may not be music to everyone’s ears, but they’re beautiful, interesting and important to investigators who are reconstructing the probe’s exact position and orientation throughout its parachute dive to Titan’s surface. “The minute-long sound file covers about four hours of real time, from when the Huygen

A new semantic web interface, which will improve access to information and present search results in associated categories in one window, was launched this week.

This new approach means that instead of users having to wade through long lists of search data to decide what is relevant, the interface will enable the machine to pull related sources into one usable view.

The new mSpace software framework developed by the School of Electronics & Computer Science (ECS) at t