July 3rd, 2025
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After touchdown in early March within the moon’s Mare Crisium impact basin, the Firefly Aerospace lunar lander became an on-duty robotic scientist. Kicking up dust and rocks, the Blue Ghost Mission-1’s full-stop arrival on March 2 marked the start of executing NASA-backed Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) instruments. The Moon lander wrapped up more than […]
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China’s Moon exploration program may utilize specialized robots to explore lunar caves. The country has officially completed its first teaching and practice base for the “simulated Moon underground space” program. Research activities were carried out on June 25 at Jingbo Lake in Mudanjiang City of northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province. Autonomous exploration “The underground volcanic lava […]
NASA: Assessments of Major Projects is a just-released report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) – the 17th annual assessment of these projects. In fiscal year 2025, NASA planned to invest about $74 billion in its major projects to continue exploring Earth, the Moon, and beyond. This is the GAO’s 17th annual assessment of […]
Heads up…today is International Asteroid Day! This impactful festivity is a global opportunity to raise public awareness about the asteroid impact hazard. Also this Day is designed to inform the public about the crisis communication actions to be taken at the global level in case of a “credible” near-Earth object threat. Asteroid Day was co-founded […]
Look for a NASA Headquarters Budget protest on Monday outside the space agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. As noted in the eagle-eyed NASA Watch website, according to the protest organizers: “This is NOT a picket line. We will not attempt to prevent or dissuade anyone from entering the building.” “The intent of this protest is […]
While NASA’s Mars Sample Return initiative is in political hot water, China is moving ahead on plotting out its rendezvous with the Red Planet. New details of China’s aims are emerging. Just how impactful could their success be is now at play within the U.S. Given the value of Mars samples, not just for science […]
A full-scale static fire of NASA’s Booster Obsolescence and Life Extension (BOLE) solid rocket booster for the Space Launch System (SLS) coughed up a surprise anomaly. The June 26 first firing of the enhanced five-segment solid rocket motor made use of over 700 data channels that appraised the 156-foot-long solid rocket motor as it fired […]
Just in time for Asteroid Day! That bright fireball that skimmed through the midday skies on June 26 shook-up folks in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee. According to experts, the fireball was produced by an asteroidal fragment three feet in diameter, weighing over a ton. That’s the word from Bill Cooke, lead of […]
It is a given there there are many unknowns regarding NASA’s science budget in the upcoming years, including funds to continue NASA’s progress in planetary defense. However, the NASA Office of Inspector General (OIG) has made six recommendations about charting the near-term future: (1) commit to providing stable funding levels for the Near Earth Object […]
At the Paris Air Show last week, Dassault Aviation, announced the signing of an agreement to support the development of a spaceplane demonstrator. This demonstrator is seen as the first step in developing a family of spaceplanes called VORTEX, which stands for Véhicule Orbital Réutilisable de Transport et d’Exploration. These demonstration objectives are an essential […]
