November 12th, 2019
Author: 
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now wrapping up Sol 2583 duties. Scott Guzewich, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, reports that over the weekend, the robot drove further uphill on Central Butte. The Mars machinery is examining the complex layering that seems to be present at the butte. Compelling workspace Guzewich notes […]
Posted in 
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now wrapping up Sol 2582 tasks. New imagery shows the robot carrying out science duties in exploring its local surroundings:
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now wrapping up Sol 2581 tasks. A sampling of imagery from the robot shows its current surroundings:
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover, now in Sol 2578, is continuing its exploration of Central Butte with a two-sol “touch-and-go” plan. That means that the rover will have one sol of contact science at its current stop before the robot continues on her drive around the base of the butte. “Early on in planning, there was […]
India’s Chandrayaan-2 orbiter is chalking up scientific findings as it circles the Moon, making use of eight state-of-the-art scientific instruments. The orbiter’s Chandra Atmospheric Composition Explorer-2 (CHACE-2) payload has detected Argon-40 in the tenuous lunar exosphere – so thin that gas atoms very rarely collide with each other. Argon-40 (40Ar), which is one of the […]
Japan’s Hayabusa2 continues to be an impressive asteroid mission. The MINERVA-II2 rover was released from Hayabusa2 back on October 2, 2019. Based on the optical observation results using a set of spacecraft-mounted cameras and radio signals from the deployed rover, the device reached the asteroid’s surface on October 3rd. The rover orbited around asteroid […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 2574 tasks. Curiosity is still in investigative mode characterizing Central Butte. “The rover is a little further up the side of the butte, and the goal is to characterize the different units that we can observe,” reports Kristen Bennett, a planetary geologist at the USGS Astrogeology Science […]
If you’re a Spinal Tap aficionado like me, “Smell the Glove” always brings back palpable music memories played by that mock heavy-metal band. But for future human exploration of the Moon, Mars and beyond one expects more from a glove! And that’s the promise of an “astronaut smart glove” – a human-machine interface to […]
Space-based experiments to investigate space solar power beaming are in the offing given a partnership between the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and Northrop Grumman. AFRL is developing space-based solar power transmission capability using high-efficiency solar cells to collect the Sun’s energy, convert it to radio frequency, and beam it to Earth. Hardware […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now engaged in Sol 2571 duties. Reports Catherine O’Connell, Planetary Geologist at University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada: “Over last weekend, Curiosity drove around 131 feet (40 meters), bringing the robot closer to Central Butte, and ended up on a small patch of bedrock. “We are […]
