News
SPIE 2020
This year takes place again the biennial SPIE international conference on Astronomy Telescopes and Instruments. It will be held between June 14th and 19th in Yokohama (Japan), link. The last 2018 edition was held in Austin (USA) gathering 2500 visitors and 125 exhibitor companies. For the 2020 edition the Swiss astronomer consortium NCCR PlanetS and the Swiss […]
Continue Reading
Meteorite contains the oldest material on Earth
Researchers determined the age of stardust from a meteorite to be seven billion years – the oldest solid material ever found on Earth. Stars have life cycles. They’re born when bits of dust and gas floating through space find each other and collapse in on each other and heat up. They burn for millions […]
Continue Reading
CHEOPS: Computer onboard booted
Before Christmas, on 18 December 2019, a Soyuz Fregat rocket was launched in Kourou, French Guyana, and put ESA’s CHEOPS space telescope into a precise polar orbit. Now the engineers test all systems aboard. Today, the computer was successfully booted. Since CHEOPS is in Orbit, its systems have been gradually ramped up. So far, ESA […]
Continue Reading
Merry Christmas and happy new year!
Illustration – « La Liberté », 18.12.2019, Alex Ballaman
Continue Reading
Capturing alien comets
There should be interstellar comets hiding in our Solar system after making a journey of many lightyears. Maybe we have already seen one but believed it was a “normal” comet formed in the Solar system. This concludes Tom Hands, astrophysicist at the University of Zürich and member of the NCCR PlanetS. Comets that suddenly light […]
Continue Reading
CHEOPS successfully launched
The relief was huge when the Soyuz Fregat rocket with CHEOPS on board took off shortly before 10 a.m. MEZ on Wednesday, 18 December 2019. The spectators at the University of Bern followed the ESA live coverage from Kourou, French Guiana, with great applause. The day before, an error in the Fregat upper stage had […]
Continue Reading
CHEOPS launch postponed
Liftoff is currently scheduled for Wednesday, December 18, 2019 at 9:54:20 CET. On Tuesday morning, 1 hour 25 minutes before liftoff during final countdown operations, the Soyuz-Fregat launcher’s automated sequence was interrupted. The rocket with the CHEOPS space telescope on board should have taken off from ESA’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana on 17.12.2019 […]
Continue Reading
Learning AI from NASA and Silicon Valley
Bern researcher and NASA take a cue from Silicon Valley to hatch Artificial Intelligence Technologies. Could the same computer algorithms that teach autonomous cars to drive safely help identify nearby asteroids or discover life in the universe? NASA scientists are trying to figure that out by partnering with pioneers in artificial intelligence (AI) — companies […]
Continue Reading
At the interface between PlanetS and SNSF
By Leonore Lovis As finance coordinator, I am at the interface between PlanetS and SNSF for all financial aspects (from the global view on PlanetS financial situation up to details on specific expenses) as well as for matters related to the employment of PlanetS members. In addition, at the local level, this position includes the […]
Continue Reading
New initiatives
The NCCR PlanetS Board at its meeting on Friday November 8, 2019 has decided to attribute CHF 350’000 to two new initiatives. Holly Capelo and Monika Lendl describe what the new projects are about. TEMPus VoLA: The Timed Epstein Multi-Pressure-Vessel at Low Accelerations from Holly L. Capelo UBE, Jean-David Bodénan ETHZ/UZH, Clement Surville UZH, Jonas Guillaume Kühn UBE, […]
Continue Reading
