February 21st, 2019
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The NASA InSight Mars landing site is a busy place. The German-supplied Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) is at the end of its deployment phase. A camera on InSight’s robotic arm has been inspecting the placement of HP3 and its engineering tether – the cable running to the lander. Upcoming is […]
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Japan’s Hayabusa2 project to explore asteroid Ryugu is approaching the time for touchdown this Friday. The team has just released images from last month’s BOX-B operation – where the spacecraft’s distance from the surface is kept at about 12 miles (20 kilometers). That operation also has Hayabusa2 move in a north-south and east-west […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now wrapping up Sol 2325 duties. Last posted imagery taken Feb. 14-15 comes from Sol 2320 and includes these photos:
A recent Falcon 9 booster static fire test was successful and launch as a secondary payload is Israel’s shoot for the Moon payload, scheduled for this Thursday evening! Israel’s SpaceIL mission to northeast Serenitatis is the continuation of an international effort “forward to the Moon, to stay!” Oded Aharonson heads the science team and a […]
New research points to geological evidence supporting a planet‐wide groundwater upwelling on Mars. This newly recognized evidence of water‐formed features significantly increases the chance that biosignatures could be buried in the sediment. These deep basins (groundwater‐fed lakes) will be of interest to future exploration missions as they might provide evidence of geological conditions […]
The Gateway Foundation has issued an informative and eye-catching look at a future vision. Published on Feb 15, 2019, the video showcases the Von Braun rotating space station – the first commercial space construction project in history. It will be serviced by the SpaceX Starship and be designed to accommodate national space […]
Japan’s Hayabusa2 team reports that the surface of asteroid Ryugu was not what they expected. Because of this on-the-spot finding, the spacecraft sampler team carried out an experiment to see if Hayabusa2 could still gather material from the asteroid’s surface when they attempt the probe’s touchdown this Friday. Final test Late last year, the […]
China’s future plans for the Moon include creation of an International Lunar Research Station. In a February 12 presentation, China’s Lu Liangliang provided an overview of the status of the Chang’e-4 mission at the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) Scientific and Technical Subcommittee in Vienna. Lu’s talk highlighted China National Space […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 2322 duties. “Our weekend plan brought us to a block of coherent rock, a treat after spending many workspaces in more broken up and rubbly areas,” reports Catherine O’Connell-Cooper, a planetary geologist at the University of New Brunswick; Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. Mars researchers have planned […]
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has observed the landing site of China’s Chang’e-4 lunar probe for the third time, capturing a much sharper view. LRO passed nearly overhead the Chang’e-4 landing site on Feb. 1, giving a 0.85-meter per pixel picture of the lander and Yutu-2 rover (Jade Rabbit-2) from an altitude of 50 […]
