Planet-studying spacecraft blasts off
WASHINGTON: A European spacecraft launched from South America on Wednesday on a three-year mission to study planets in other solar systems.
The Characterising ExOPlanets Satellite (CHEOPS) mission blasted off from Kourou, French Guiana atop a Russian Soyuz rocket. The launch came 24 hours after a first attempt was delayed shortly before lift-off because of a software problem in the upper stage of the rocket.
The European Space Agency says the satellite is the first mission dedicated to studying bright nearby stars that are already known to have planets, and will focus on “planets in the superEarth to Neptune size range”.
The agency hopes that the data sent by the mission will enable the bulk density of those planets to be calculated, which is a first step toward understanding them better.
TRUMP’S ‘SPACE FORCE’
The US Senate on Tuesday voted overwhelmingly to pass a $738 billion defence policy bill that creates President Donald Trump’s “Space Force” and gives federal employees 12 weeks of paid parental leave, sending it to the White House, where Trump has promised to quickly sign it into law.
The Senate voted 86-8 in favour of the National Defence Authorisation Act, or NDAA. The Democratic-led House approved the bill by 377-48 last week.
BOEING’S ISS MISSION
Boeing is all set to launch its Starliner spacecraft for the first time to the International Space Station (ISS) at the end of this week, a key mission as NASA looks to resume crewed flight by 2020.
Its sole passenger will be bandana-clad dummy Rosie, named after Rosie the Riveter, a campaign icon used to recruit women to munitions factory jobs during World War 2.