October 17th, 2020
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NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now conducting Sol 2914 tasks. Curiosity is mostly chilling out this weekend while researchers continue to investigate the latest drill hole, “Groken,” reports Ashley Stroupe, a mission operations engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The sample collected comes from a nodule-rich corner of rock. “In the process of drilling, […]
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Nokia’s Bell Labs is working under a new $14.1 million NASA Tipping Point award to deploy the first LTE/4G (Long-Term Evolution) communications system in space. The system could support lunar surface communications at greater distances, increased speeds, and provide more reliability than current standards. According to Bell Labs, the first wireless network on the Moon […]
NASA Curiosity Mars rover is now carrying out Sol 2912 duties. Curiosity has been hard at work, taming the “Groken,” the 29th successful drill hole on Mars, reports Catherine O’Connell-Cooper, a planetary geologist at the University of New Brunswick. A recent plan saw the Mars science team transition into the analysis part of a drill […]
There’s a new challenge on the table – developing miniature payload prototypes that can be sent to the Moon – to fill in the gaps in our lunar knowledge. Back in April of this year, fourteen teams were recognized and rewarded for their innovative approaches to miniature payload development. But now there’s a larger […]
The Magic and Menace of SpaceShipOne by Brian Binnie; Black Sky Enterprise; 500 pages; October 4, 2020; Ordering information at: https://brianbinnie.net/ This is an extraordinary book and it is a true, “can’t put it down” volume. Binnie is a former United States Navy officer and test pilot for SpaceShipOne, the experimental spaceplane created by aeronautical […]
How to open up and establish a sustainable cislunar economy has been blueprinted by Tory Bruno, CEO of the United Launch Alliance (ULA). Bruno rolled out a ULA assessment during a webinar hosted by the Beyond Earth Institute. The institute is exploring the criteria and definitions of a community beyond Earth. Bruno said the ULA […]
Blue Origin’s New Shepard program completed today from a West Texas spaceport the 13th mission to space and back. The firm — backed by Amazon.com mogul, Jeff Bezos — reports that the mission marked the 7th consecutive flight for this particular vehicle – a record. In a company statement, Blue Origin notes that […]
A global team of researchers using ground-based observatories announced September 14 the detection of phosphine gas wafting about in the clouds of Venus. On Earth, this gas is only made industrially – or by microbes that thrive in oxygen-free environments. The detection has given rise to the thought of extraterrestrial “aerial” life on hostile Venus. […]
Last August, the Navy established an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) Task Force assigned the duty of coming to grips with the nature and origins of aerial happenings on the idea that they could potentially pose a threat to U.S. national security. UAPs have become top dog in the bizarre and baffling inventory of strangeness. […]
The European Space Agency has opened a new call for ideas for space-based solar power – on the lookout for novel system concepts for applications on Earth, the Moon, or Mars. “The potential of this concept to contribute to long-term sustainable energy is very high,” explains ESA Engineer Advenit Makaya, who is leading […]
