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  • Rymdteknik ska stoppa tjuvjakten

    Varje dag dödas i genomsnitt 55 elefanter och 3 noshörningar av tjuvjägare för sina betar och horn. Nu startar det 5-åriga innovationsprojektet Space for Wildlife som ett initiativ i linje med Agenda 2030. Det är rymdföretaget Umbilical Design och Peace Parks Foundation som visar hur teknik från rymdsektorn kan leda till nya innovationer för att stoppa tjuvjakten.

  • PRESSINBJUDAN: Möt Japans första kvinna i rymden Chiaki Mukai och Christer Fuglesang

    Dr Chiaki Mukai var hjärtkirurg och forskare när hon rekryterades som astronaut i Japan på 1980-talet. Hon har varit med på två rymdfärder och då ansvarat för olika experiment inom rymdmedicin och livsvetenskap. I dag är hon chef för Japan Aerospace Exploration Agencys (JAXA) Center for Applied Space Medicine and Human Research, och Vice President för Tokyo University of Science.

  • Drönare på Svalbard kan hjälpa arktisforskare med klimatarbete

    Rymdföretaget Umbilical Design arrangerar tillsammans med sin teknikpartner ÅF en drönarworkshop på Svalbard för forskningsstationschefer från 79 arktiska forskningsstationer. Syftet är att se hur drönare kan stödja klimatforskare i arbetet mot den globala uppvärmningen. Att driva hållbar utveckling med hjälp av rymdteknik har blivit något av ett kännetecken för Umbilical Design.

  • ESA lägger rymdkonferens i Lund

    ​Rymdteknik för hållbara, smarta städer och innovationer? Det är något som ska diskuteras när den Europeiska Rymdorganisationen ESA (European Space Agency) håller konferens under tre dagar i Lund i mars.

  • Umbilical Design erhåller förnyat treårskontrakt från ESA för att överföra rymdteknik till svensk industri

    Det svenska innovationsföretaget Umbilical Design, ledande inom design för rymden och extrema miljöer, har fått förnyat treårskontrakt som Space Broker för Sverige med den europeiska rymdorganisationen ESA. Umbilical Design arbetar med tekniköverföring från rymdsektorn till andra områden som till exempel medicinteknik, fordonsindustri och hållbar stadsplanering.

  • Umbilical Design chosen as a 2016 Red Herring Top 100 Europe Winner

    April 25, 2016, Stockholm, Sweden – Last week in Amsterdam, Red Herring announced its Red Herring Europe award winners this evening at the Top 100 forum, recognizing Europe’s leading private companies and celebrating these companies innovations and technologies across their respective industries. The Swedish innovation company Umbilical Design was chosen as a 2016 Red Herring Top 100 Europe Winner

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Video: 00:01:51 Space weather ‘reporter’ Vigil will be the world’s first space weather mission to be permanently positioned at Lagrange point 5, a unique vantage point that allows us to see solar activity days before it reaches Earth. ESA’s Vigil mission will be a dedicated operational space weather mission, sending data 24/7 from deep space. Vigil’s tools as a space weather reporter at its unique location in deep space will drastically improve forecasting abilities. From there, Vigil can see ‘around the corner’ of the Sun and observe activity on the surface of the Sun days before it rotates into view from Earth. It can also watch the Sun-Earth line side-on, giving an earlier and clearer picture of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) heading toward Earth. Radiation, plasma and particles flung towards Earth by the Sun can pose a very real risk to critical infrastructure our society relies on. This includes satellites for navigation, communications and banking services as well as power grids and radio communication on the ground. A report by Lloyd’s of London estimates that a severe space weather event, caused by such an outburst of solar activity, could cost the global economy 2.4 trillion dollars over five years.  ESA’s response to this growing threat is Vigil, a cornerstone mission of the Agency’s Space Safety Programme, planned for launch in 2031. Vigil’s data will give us drastically improved early warnings and forecasts, which in turn help protect satellites, astronauts and critical infrastructure on the ground that we all depend on. Click here for the subtitled version of the video. Click here to access the related broadcast quality video material. 

Video: 00:00:40 View of Earth as seen by ESA project astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski inside the seven-windowed cupola, the International Space Station's "window to the world".The European Space Agency-built Cupola is the favourite place of many astronauts on the International Space Station. It serves not only as a unique photo spot, but also for observing robotic activities of the Canadian Space Agency's robotic arm Canadarm2, arriving spacecraft and spacewalks. Sławosz was launched to the International Space Station on the Dragon spacecraft as part of Axiom Mission 4 on 25 June 2025. The 20-day mission on board is known as Ignis.During the Ignis mission, Sławosz conducted 13 experiments proposed by Polish companies and institutions and developed in collaboration with ESA, along with three additional ESA-led experiments. These covered a broad range of areas including human research, materials science, biology, biotechnology and technology demonstrations.  The Ax-4 mission marks the second commercial human spaceflight for an ESA project astronaut. Ignis was sponsored by the Polish government and supported by ESA, the Polish Ministry of Economic Development and Technology (MRiT) and the Polish Space Agency (POLSA).   

Image: This image tells the story of redemption for one lonely star. The young star MP Mus (PDS 66) was thought to be all alone in the Universe, surrounded by nothing but a featureless band of gas and dust called a protoplanetary disc. In most cases, the material inside a protoplanetary disc condenses to form new planets around the star, leaving large gaps where the gas and dust used to be. These features are seen in almost every disc – but not in MP Mus’s.When astronomers first observed it with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), they saw a smooth, planet-free disc, shown here in the right image. The team, led by Álvaro Ribas, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge, UK, gave this star another chance and re-observed it with ALMA at longer wavelengths that peer even deeper into the protoplanetary disc than before. These new observations, shown in the left image, revealed a gap and a ring that had been obscured in previous observations, suggesting that MP Mus might have company after all.Meanwhile, another piece of the puzzle was being revealed in Germany as Miguel Vioque, an astronomer at the European Southern Observatory, studied this same star with the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) Gaia mission. Vioque noticed something suspicious – the star was wobbling. A bit of gravitational detective work, together with insights from the new disc structures revealed by ALMA, showed that this motion could be explained by the presence of a gas giant exoplanet. Both teams presented their joint results in a new paper published in Nature Astronomy. In what they describe as “a beautiful merging of two groups approaching the same object from different angles”, they show that MP Mus isn’t so boring after all.[Image description: This is an observation from the ALMA telescope, showing two versions (side-by-side) of a protoplanetary disc. Both discs are bright, glowing yellow-orange objects with a diffused halo against a dark background. The right disc is more smooth and blurry looking. The left disc shows more detail, for example gaps and rings within it.]Source: ESO

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