January 20th, 2019
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The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) Hayabusa2 is being readied for its first asteroid Ryugu touchdown and collecting samples next month. First touchdown The first Hayabusa2 touchdown (TD1) is planned for the week of February 18. A backup week is March 4. JAXA Hayabusa2 team members have decided that another target marker will not be […]
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A recent posting by NASA has indicated that the U.S. space agency and the China National Space Administration (CNSA) are coordinating efforts focused on the farside landing of China’s Chang’e-4. That robotic spacecraft touched down in the South Pole-Aitken Basin on January 3rd. In particular, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) is expected to image the […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is wrapping up Sol 2294 duties. But reports Melissa Rice, a planetary geologist at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington: “Sometimes the best laid plans of rovers go astray.” After wrapping up looks at the Rock Hall drill site, the plan was for Curiosity to start driving towards the clay-bearing […]
The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) began in 2017 to produce a series of unclassified Defense Intelligence overviews of major foreign military challenges faced by the United States. A new volume — CHINA MILITARY POWER: Modernizing a Force to Fight and Win — provides details on China’s defense and military goals, strategy, plans, and […]
A new study has been issued — Planetary Protection Classification of Sample-Return Missions from the Martian Moons – Phobos and Deimos. Currently, the Committee on Space Research of the International Council of Scientific Unions’ (COSPAR for short) planetary protection policy does not specify the status of sample return missions from Phobos or Deimos. Although […]
NASA has posted a January 19th story regarding its campaign to return to the Moon with global partners. This past month, the article explains, NASA held discussions with the China National Space Administration (CNSA) to explore the possibility of observing a signature of the landing plume of their lunar lander, Chang’e 4, using the […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is wrapping up Sol 2293 duties. The robot’s last day at Rock Hall saw scientists gathering last data at this location. Reports Brittney Cooper, an atmospheric scientist at York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada and Claire Newman, also an atmospheric scientist at Aeolis Research in Pasadena, California: Scientists had a 2.5 […]
To support the educational community in running activities relating to the Moon, the European Space Agency (ESA) has launched a new education webpage: Teach with the Moon. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, the first crewed landing on the Moon. ESA, alongside other space agencies, has long thought of the […]
China’s farside lander carried to the lunar surface an experiment devised by Chongqing University. Six living things — cotton, rapeseed, potato, thale cress, yeast and fruit flies – form a simple micro ecosystem. Chinese media now reports that nightfall on the Moon has the mini-biosphere’s temperature dropping to nearly 180-degree centigrade below freezing. China Daily […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now wrapping up Sol 2291 duties. The robot is concluding a single sol of activities on Sol 2291, reports Rachel Kronyak, a planetary geologist at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. “As we begin to wrap up our activities at the Rock Hall drill site, Sol 2291 is chock full […]
