2
Jun 11

Hot stuff: the making of BepiColombo

Source: ESA Space Engineering


BepiColombo, a joint ESA/JAXA mission to Mercury.
Image credit: ESA /JAXA BepiColombo.

For BepiColombo, ESA has had to extend the limits of existing design standards and develop altogether new design concepts as well. How to begin building a spacecraft that needs to endure sunlight 10 times more intense than in Earth orbit, with surfaces hotter than a kitchen hot plate – high enough, in fact, to melt lead?(read more)

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2
Jun 11

Astronomers observe carbon-atmosphere white dwarf stars with the Hubble Space Telescope

Source: CRAQ

A team of researchers composed of astrophysicists from Québec, and led by Patrick Dufour, postdoctoral research at the Université de Montréal (UdeM) and member of the CRAQ, analyzed data recently obtained from the Hubble Space Telescope with its new instrument, the Cosmic Origin Spectrograph (COS). The work of the researchers (from the UdeM, the University of Colorado, and the Space Telescope Institute in Baltimore), confirmed the luminosity variations of three stars already observed with ground telescopes. They also discovered a new member of the pulsating white dwarf subgroup, for the first time with observations from space. (read more)

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