Reuters Science News Summary

“No human-made object has ever passed this close to a star, so Parker will truly be returning data from uncharted territory,” Nick Pinkine, mission operations manager at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, said in a NASA blog. India's push for home-grown satellite constellation gets 30 aspirants Thirty Indian companies have answered the space regulator's call to build and operate constellations of Earth observation (EO) satellites in a groundbreaking private-public partnership to reduce the country's reliance on foreign data for defense, infrastructure management and other critical mapping needs.

Following is a summary of current science news briefs.

NASA spacecraft attempts closest-ever approach to the sun

NASA's Parker Solar Probe was expected to make history on Tuesday by flying into the sun's outer atmosphere called the corona on a mission to help scientists learn more about Earth's closest star. “No human-made object has ever passed this close to a star, so Parker will truly be returning data from uncharted territory,” Nick Pinkine, mission operations manager at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, said in a NASA blog.

India's push for home-grown satellite constellation gets 30 aspirants

Thirty Indian companies have answered the space regulator's call to build and operate constellations of Earth observation (EO) satellites in a groundbreaking private-public partnership to reduce the country's reliance on foreign data for defense, infrastructure management and other critical mapping needs. "We have received 9 applications ... Each applicant represents a consortium, involving a total of 30 companies," said Pawan Goenka, chairman of the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre, or IN-SPACe.