November 15th, 2018
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The Eu:CROPIS mission will be launched into space from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California November 19, onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 booster. Eu:CROPIS stands for “Euglena and Combined Regenerative Organic-food Production in Space.” The unique investigation was designed and built by the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) and the […]
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NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 2230 tasks. Rachel Kronyak, a planetary geologist at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, reports that the Mars machinery has been busy delving into the mineralogy of the latest drill hole sample. Scientists are eager to get a Highfield drill sample to the Sample Analysis at Mars […]
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and Autodesk have engaged in a multi-year collaborative research project to investigate new approaches for building interplanetary landers. The concept lander, perhaps the most complicated structure ever created using “generative design,” was unveiled today at Autodesk University in Las Vegas. Design solutions Generative design is a relatively new approach that […]
The sale of Moon rocks will headline Sotheby’s Space Exploration auction on November 29, offered with an estimate of $700,000–1,000,000. The sale will mark just the second time that an actual piece of another world has ever been offered for public sale. The three lunar samples, which were brought to Earth in 1970 by […]
The European Space Agency (ESA) is pressing forward on European payloads that could be contributed to a possible Moon exploration campaign. A just-released request for information (RFI) is one leg of a campaign to be implemented within the framework of the European Space Exploration Envelope Program, subject to decisions at the ESA Council […]
NASA’s Opportunity Mars rover has been silent, perhaps temporarily, following a dust-up with the Red Planet. But researchers have created the soundtrack of the 5,000th Mars sunrise captured by Opportunity using “data sonification” techniques to create a two-minute piece of music. Pixel by pixel The piece of music was produced by scanning a picture […]
National Geographic has officially launched Starstruck – a celebration of space across its global networks, magazines, books and more. For starters, check out MARS: INSIDE SPACEX, premiering Monday, November 12, at 8 p.m. eastern, an unprecedented glimpse into SpaceX and Elon Musk’s plans to make Mars home. For […]
Mars is going to be a busy place in 2021. The U.S., China, and Europe will attempt robotic Mars landings, with the United Arab Emirates slated to send an orbiter towards the Red Planet. The increasing pace of Mars exploration was shown last week by an ExoMars Landing Site Selection Working Group recommendation of […]
Now in Sol 2226, NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is performing post-drilling tasks – the 18th drill hole completed by the robot. New imagery from Curiosity shows the new drill site and self-inspection.
China’s new rockets, Long March-9, Long March-8 and Smart Dragon, were presented at the China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition, in Zhuhai, Guangdong Province. Long March-9 (Chang Zheng-9) is a heavy-lift launch vehicle designed to carry a payload of 140 tonnes into low-Earth orbit and 50 tonnes into Earth-Moon transfer orbit. China plans to […]
