Category: Space
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First launch of new fire-monitoring satellite aiming to transform wildfire detection and response
Remote-sensing technology originally designed for hurricane forecasting at the University of Michigan inspires tools to help fight wildfires from space.
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A new look at Voyager 2 data explains one of Uranus’s long-standing mysteries
The spacecraft saw Uranus’s magnetic field at a weird time, so our picture of the planet and its moons actually represents an edge case rather than the norm.
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Space Force establishes $35M institute for versatile propulsion and power at U-M
To optimize power, efficiency and freedom to maneuver, engineers aim to demonstrate new technologies for power generation, electric propulsion and chemical rockets.
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Could one of Jupiter’s moons support alien life? U-M scientists are on the case
U-M researchers helped find the first evidence for an ocean on the icy moon Europa. Now, with NASA’s return mission, they aim to learn if it’s habitable.
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The corona is weirdly hot—Parker Solar Probe rules out one explanation
S-shaped bends in the sun’s magnetic field don’t form at the sun’s surface, like some scientists thought, and can’t directly heat the sun’s corona.
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Bridge in a box: Unlocking origami’s power to produce load-bearing structures
Foldable origami with thick panels opens a world of possibilities.
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Explaining a supernova’s ‘string of pearls’
It looks like the same mechanism that breaks up airplane contrails might be at play in forming the clumps of hydrogen gas that ring the remnant of supernova 1987A.
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Tracking undetectable space junk
Colliding pieces of space debris emit electric signals that could help track small debris littering Earth’s orbit, potentially saving satellites and spacecraft.
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NASA advances U-M’s Mission Concept Study to photograph entire auroras from space
Two satellites could join NASA’s fleet studying the Sun and its impacts on Earth’s magnetic field.
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$9.7M for tools to improve forecasts of harmful space weather
Better forecasting could protect astronauts and instruments from solar eruptions that release damaging, high-energy particles.
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Megastorms leave marks on Saturn’s atmosphere for hundreds of years
Massive storms have appeared as “Great White Spots” on Saturn every 20 to 30 years since 1876. The impacts of those older storms have lasted in Saturn’s atmosphere for centuries.
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U-M’s space design and manufacturing draws second round of support from DARPA
Without the constraints of building on Earth, engineers look to expand the capabilities of what space structures can do.