X-ray

Theoretical work commissioned to the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) by the European Space Agency has recently concluded that lasers capable of generating extremely short pulses — known as "femtosecond comb lasers" — could be of great help in measuring the distance between two or more spacecraft to an accuracy of just a few microns, an essential component to formation flying space missions scheduled for the next decades.  Read More

The German Aerospace Center (DLR) and Russia’s Roskosmos space agency are joining forces to try and shed some light on the poorly understood phenomenon referred to as ‘dark energy’. In 2012 the German 'extended Roentgen Survey with an Imaging Telescope Array'(eROSITA) X-ray telescope will be taken into orbit on board the Russian Spektrum Roentgen Gamma (SRG) satellite to start searching for black holes and dark matter in an attempt to answer why the expansion of the universe is accelerating instead of slowing down.  Read More