For more than 30 years, the Naval Postgraduate School’s (NPS) Fleet Satellite Communications System (FLTSATCOM) lab has advanced student knowledge in satellite design, engineering and operations. Once a vanguard of the institution’s spacecraft design and engineering education and research programs, the ground test - or qualification - model identical to FLTSATCOM satellites launched decades ago to support advanced U.S. Navy ultrahigh frequency (UHF) communications, executed its final telemetry student exercise, Aug. 25. Long overdue renovations to the school’s Halligan Hall will soon displace the satellite from its NPS home.

While the early Mars climate remains an open question, a new study suggests its atmosphere may have been hospitable to life due to volcanic activity which emitted sulfur gases that contributed to a greenhouse warming effect.

The European Space Agency’s Plato spacecraft has safely arrived at ESTEC, ESA’s technical heart in the Netherlands. There, engineers will complete the spacecraft by connecting its solar panels and sunshield, and carry out a series of critical tests to confirm that Plato is fit for launch and ready for its planet-hunting mission in space.

As atmospheric observations of exoplanets become increasingly precise, it is more important than ever to correctly account for the effect of starspots on host stars. An ideal opportunity to study starspots arises when a transiting planet passes directly across them—a phenomenon known as a spot-crossing transit. An international research team led by scientists at the Astrobiology Center (Tokyo, Japan) has combined ground-based observations to reveal the detailed properties of the starspots and the orbital geometry of the planetary system TOI-3884.