December 12th, 2018
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China Central Television (CCTV) reports that the country’s Chang’e-4 lunar probe has successfully decelerated near the Moon Wednesday This is a vital step forward leading to the spacecraft’s attempt to make the first-ever soft landing on the farside of the Moon, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) announced. Elliptical lunar orbit CCTV reports that after […]
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NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is wrapping up Sol 2257 tasks. Reports Brittney Cooper, an atmospheric scientist at York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada: “Even on Mars, where every second of Curiosity’s sol is planned, things don’t always go quite as expected.” In this case, a planned drive of the robot stopped at the mid-drive point. Bump […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 2256 tasks. The hunt for red Jura continues reports Rachel Kronyak, a planetary geologist; University of Tennessee in Knoxville. “After a successful weekend of activities and driving, we were hopeful that we would wake up on Sol 2256 and be ready for contact science and drilling,” […]
China’s adventurous mission to the farside of the Moon attained its second orbit trimming on Sunday afternoon The Chang’e-4 lunar probe was launched in the early hours of Saturday from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China’s Sichuan Province. If all goes well, the lander/rover will touch down on the farside of the […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is wrapping up Sol 2255 duties. Reports Abigail Fraeman, a planetary geologist at NASA/JPL in Pasadena, California, even though they looked promising, the red Jura rocks scientists had hoped to drill are too fractured to drill safely. “The texture of these rocks is actually fairly typical of the red Jura […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 2250 duties. Susanne Schwenzer, a planetary geologist at the Open University, Milton Keynes, in the U.K., reports that on sol 2250 the rover is to finish observations on and around the Highfield drill hole and drive to an area where red Jura is exposed. Change detection “The […]
China is set to launch on December 8 the first farside lunar landing mission in history, headed for a touchdown within the South Pole‐Aitken (SPA) basin following a 27-day flight. The scientific instruments of China’s robotic Chang’e-4 lander/rover will analyze both surface and subsurface of this region. Both the lander and the rover were designed as […]
NASA’s InSight spacecraft operations are moving forward, as indicated by a set of November 30th images. A lens cover was flipped open on InSight’s Instrument Context Camera (ICC) on Nov. 30, 2018. Located below the deck of the InSight lander, the ICC has a fisheye view, creating a curved horizon. Some clumps of dust are […]
NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover is now carrying out Sol 2246 duties. Shown here are just-in images from the Mars machinery:
Nine U.S. companies are now eligible to bid on NASA delivery services to the lunar surface through Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) contracts, as one of the first steps toward long-term scientific study and human exploration of the Moon and eventually Mars. And the NASA selected private […]
