May 1st, 2021
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A House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee hearing on April 29th was entitled: “What do Scientists Hope to Learn from NASA’s Mars Perseverance Rover? Witnesses: Dr. Michael A. Meyer, Lead Scientist, Mars Exploration Program, National Aeronautics and Space Administration https://republicans-science.house.gov/sites/republicans.science.house.gov/files/2021-04-29%20Testimony%20Meyer.pdf Dr. Bethany L. Ehlmann, Professor of […]
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NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter has shown the “Wright stuff” on the Red Planet. Multiple sorties of the rotorcraft have been so successful that the device is now moving into an operational role supporting the Perseverance rover’s scientific sleuthing ahead. The future use of airborne tools on Mars is also being tested in the Holuhraun, […]
With China launching the core module of its space station, the country’s space program officials are detailing plans for its use when fully constructed by the end of 2022. As of now, 17 nations have confirmed their participation in nine scientific tasks on the station, with China signing agreements with the United Nations Office for […]
China’s core space station module is now circling Earth, lofted April 29 by a Long March-5B Y2 carrier rocket from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site on the northeastern coast of south China’s Hainan Province. Tianhe is the foundational module for China’s first low-Earth orbital space station named Tiangong, which means “heavenly palace” in Chinese. The […]
China is set to loft a key module of the country’s space station on April 29 (Beijing Time) – around 03:00 UTC. The critical “Tianhe-1” core module will be lofted by a Long March-5B Y2 rocket from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in south China’s Hainan province. If successful, China will later dispatch a Tianzhou-2 […]
A NASA Office of Inspector General report has taken a look at the space agency’s Artemis program, noting that the effort faces significant challenges. The NASA OIG report explains that current plans to launch Artemis I in 2021 and ultimately land astronauts on the Moon by the end of 2024 are “highly unlikely.” NASA’s […]
The Curiosity rover at Gale Crater is parked on top of Mont Mercou providing a spectacular vantage point to survey both the terrain the robot has driven over and future areas of interest. Reports Lucy Thompson, a planetary geologist at University of New Brunswick; Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada: “Based on orbital signatures, we are expecting […]
Another installment of “Mars Guy” takes the viewer to the Perseverance rover at Jezero Crater. Mars Guy is Arizona State University associate research professor Steve Ruff, a Mars geologist with decades of experience exploring the Red Planet. This new video details the rover’s Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals instrument […]
China and Russia are developing a road map to establish an international station on the Moon. An invitation to all interested countries, international organizations and partners to cooperate in the project was made last Friday by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) and its Russian counterpart Roscosmos. The announcement was made at a conference focused […]
Much of the subsurface of Mars may well be a nice niche for microbial life. That’s a finding from a new study published in the journal Astrobiology that looked at the chemical composition of Martian meteorites tossed off the Red Planet that eventually landed here on Earth. New research determined that those Mars-spawned rocks — […]
