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Three spacecraft from three different nations arrived at Mars in February 2021. Two of those nations are newcomers to Mars and the third successfully set out the path for a Mars sample return.
Nāmakanaui, a three-band submillimetre receiver, is currently being commissioned on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, report Instrumentation Specialists Izumi Mizuno and Chih-Chiang Han.
The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic forced a string of cancelled conferences, causing many organizers to shift meetings online, with mixed success. Seizing the opportunity, a group of researchers came together to rethink how the conference experience and collaboration in general can be improved in a more virtual-centric future.
The Very Large Telescope’s Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph (UVES) recently marked 20 years of operations, but the job is not done for this workhorse instrument, write Instrument Scientist Luca Sbordone and Fellow Camila Navarrete.
Nature Astronomy is committed to open science. The new open access option for authors is the next step along the road to full transparency, reproducibility and accessibility.
The Pan-African School for Emerging Astronomers (PASEA) is an innovative short course for African university students, held by an African-led international collaboration. PASEA aims to build a critical mass of astronomers in Africa and exchange ideas about teaching across continents.
As we collectively welcome the new year, we retrace the 2020 milestones in sample return and look at a few of the major upcoming events in 2021. There are many reasons for astronomers to be optimistic.
HORuS, a new high-resolution spectrograph for the Gran Telescopio Canarias, will facilitate an expanded range of optical and near-infrared studies, explains Instrument Scientist Carlos Allende Prieto.