October 23rd, 2017
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The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and the international community are celebrating fifty years since the Outer Space Treaty entered into force on October 10, 1967. The Outer Space Treaty — officially entitled the Treaty of Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including […]
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The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has issued a new space report, looking at NASA’s development of three programs to put astronauts into space and beyond low Earth orbit, eventually to Mars: the Orion crew vehicle, Space Launch System, and Exploration Ground Systems. GAO notes that all 3 programs must work together. Oversight challenges […]
Now in Sol 1852, NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is continuing its scientific sleuthing in a target-rich setting on the Red Planet. Reports Ken Herkenhoff, a planetary geologist at the USGS in Flagstaff, Arizona, the robot drove over 65 feet (20 meters) on Sol 1850, wheeling into an area with lots of bedrock exposed. “We had […]
A permanent human settlement on the Moon via Hawaii is being blueprinted. Held earlier this month, an International MoonBase Summit (IMS) brought together representatives from academia, government and the private sector to help lay the groundwork for a base on the lunar surface. “Because of its geography, geology and culture, Hawaii is the perfect […]
A comfy room on the Moon to protect explorers may be a large open lava tube in the Marius Hills region. That’s the deep dive finding of a new study using radar data collected by a Japanese lunar orbiter — the SELENE spacecraft – and used to detect underlying lava tubes. SELENE was launched in […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover, now in Sol 1845, has been playing a “game of inches,” reports Michelle Minitti, a planetary geologist at Framework in Silver Spring, Maryland. “There’s a line in the halftime scene of the movie ‘Any Given Sunday’ that ‘life’s this game of inches…the margin for error is so small.’ The same is […]
New research suggests that recurring slope lineae (RSL) on Mars might be causing landslides, and/or the landslides are being sparked by ice-clouds. RSL are dark, fingerlike features that creep down steep Martian slopes in warm weather and continue to puzzle scientists. “Seasonal Slumps in Juventae Chasma, Mars” has been published in the American Geophysical Union’s […]
The respected space consulting firm, Euroconsult, reports that 300 satellites with a mass over 50 kilograms will be launched on average each year by 2026 for government agencies and commercial organizations worldwide. This onslaught into the heavens is “a new paradigm” in the space industry with small satellites and mega constellations of spacecraft – a […]
The latest project from Emmy Award-winning Felix & Paul Studios, Space Explorers lets you reach new heights through the power of VR. Created in partnership with NASA, the experience follows their astronauts as they prepare to launch into space—and its coming to Gear VR and Rift in early 2018. […]
The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has announced it will hold a press conference on October 16, 2017 at 16:00 CEST [14:00 UTC], at its headquarters in Garching, Germany, to present “groundbreaking observations of an astronomical phenomenon that has never been witnessed before.” This is an “unprecedented discovery” the ESO statement notes. To keep eye and […]
