September 19th, 2019
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The attempted touchdown of India’s Vikram lunar lander near the Moon’s South Pole ended in failure on September 7th. In the meantime, how and why it failed has become the target of exploratory postings – some of which suggest the craft nose-dived into the lunar landscape at upwards of 180 miles per hour. Loss of […]
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NASA is developing a trio of systems to put astronauts into space—the Orion crew vehicle, Space Launch System, and Exploration Ground Systems. NASA will need these systems for its human space exploration goals, including sending astronauts to the Moon as soon as 2024. How is NASA managing these large and complex efforts? Past reports […]
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has reportedly failed to spot India’s failed Chandrayaan-2 lunar lander. Mark Carreau of Aerospace Daily & Defense Report says LRO’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) on Sept. 17 imaged the intended lunar south pole landing site for India’s Chandrayaan-2 Vikram lander, “but long shadows in the area may be obscuring […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is closing out Sol 2529 duties. The Mars robot has scored its 23rd drill hole on Mars, reports Mark Salvatore, a planetary geologist at the University of Michigan. “Coming in at roughly 43 millimeters depth…and both the rover and new drill hole are happy and healthy!” Salvatore noted that Curiosity drilled […]
Japan’s Hayabusa2 asteroid explorer is soon to dispatch a new robot onto space rock of ages, Ryugu. The spacecraft is slated to unload the roughly 2.2 pounds (one kilogram) Minerva-II2 next month – a device equipped with a camera, thermometer, photodiode, and accelerometer. Minerva is short for MIcro-Nano Experimental Robot Vehicle for Asteroid. This […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 2529 duties. Reports Vivian Sun, a planetary geologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, it’s go for drilling at Glen Etive 2. “After studying the results from the ‘Glen Etive 1’ drill hole over conjunction, the team has decided to proceed with a second drill hole at […]
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has issued a Science & Tech Spotlight on hypersonic weapons. As the GAO spotlight notes, hypersonic weapons, once developed, would fly faster than 3,800 mph and be extremely difficult to defend against. “Advances in hypersonic technologies have significant implications for national security, as well as for transportation and space […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now wrapping up Sol 2527 duties. The Red Planet machinery has returned to operations after standing down during the recent opposition from August 28 to September 7, 2019 – a period when Mars is on the opposite side of the Sun from Earth and curtails communications between Earth and the […]
Aliens of all stripes are zeroing in on the secretive Area 51 next week. Area 51 is the hush-hush U.S. Air Force military installation located at Groom Lake in southern Nevada. The installation has been the focus of numerous conspiracies involving the base’s extraterrestrial connection – a locale for captured flying saucers and surely an […]
The classified U.S. Air Force X-37B space plane program has winged its way to a new milestone in its hush-hush current flight – winging past two years in Earth orbit. Also tagged as the Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV) – 5 mission, this currently orbiting space plane was rocketed into low Earth orbit back on […]
