Astronomy & Astrophysics News

TAU’s Professor Isaac Ben-Israel to receive Distinguished Service Award

The International Astronautical Federation (IAF) has announced that it will award its 2024 Distinguished Service Award to Professor Isaac Ben-Israel, Head of the Blavatnik Interdisciplinary Cyber Research Center at Tel Aviv University (TAU) and former chairman of the Israel Space Agency, for his “outstanding contribution to astronautics (space sciences)” in general and “to the advancement… Read More

TAU establishes first satellite observatory for quantum optical communication

The Center for Quantum Science and Technology at Tel Aviv University (TAU) has built the first ground station in Israel — and among the most advanced in the world — for tracking, sensing, hyperspectral imaging, and optical and quantum communication with satellites in orbit around the Earth. The station includes a satellite observatory dome with… Read More

Advanced nanosatellite developed by TAU launched into orbit

On January 3, 2023, TAU-SAT3, a nanosatellite developed at Tel Aviv University (TAU), was launched on SpaceX’s launch vehicle Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. According to the researchers, TAU-SAT3 represents a scientific breakthrough, paving the way toward demonstration of optical and quantum communication from space via nanosatellites. TAU-SAT 3 is… Read More

New international study provides details of the oldest galaxies in the universe

Tel Aviv University (TAU) astronomer Professor Rennan Barkana of TAU’s Sackler School of Physics and Astronomy was a member of an international team of astrophysicists that has managed for the first time to statistically characterize the first galaxies in the universe. According to the groundbreaking results, the earliest galaxies, which formed only 200 million years… Read More

Galaxy-surveying spacecraft Gaia detects two new planets

Researchers from Tel Aviv University (TAU) led the discovery of two new planets in remote solar systems by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) spacecraft Gaia, a star-surveying satellite on a mission to chart a 3D map of our Milky Way galaxy and beyond. Because this is the first time that Gaia has successfully located new… Read More

TAU satellite protects electronic systems from hazardous radiation effects in space

Tel Aviv University (TAU) recently launched the TauSat-3 satellite to space, a technological demonstrator of the COTS-Capsule, an innovative space mechanism for detecting and mitigating cosmic-ray-induced damage to space systems. TauSat-3, which is approximately the size of a shoebox, was carefully designed and built by TAU’s team of experts and will examine the performance of… Read More