October 2nd, 2020
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NASA is starting to define an Internet-like architecture, known as LunaNet, detailing needed space communications relay and navigation services to support the space agency’s Artemis program and its planned missions to the Moon. LunaNet would involve position, navigation, and timing (PNT) services in support of lunar missions. Conceptually, the LunaNet architecture embodies three […]
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NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 2899 tasks. Tomorrow on Mars, scientists are celebrating 2,900 sols on Mars with the Curiosity Rover, reports Ashley Stroupe, Mission Operations Engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The priority in a recently scripted two-sol plan (Sol 289902900) is the completion of the back-to-back atmospheric measurements by […]
A third group of Chinese astronauts has been selected for the nation’s coming space station mission, the China Manned Space Agency reported on Thursday morning. The 18 new astronauts – 17 men and one woman – are in three groups: — seven will become spacecraft pilots and were chosen from aviators from the People’s […]
An upcoming auction by Boston-based RR Auction will feature a special Apollo 17 item from the late Gene Cernan. The Apollo 17 mission to the Moon took place December 7–19, 1972. Cernan wore a cuff checklist on his wrist for the duration of the final Apollo 17 moonwalk, exposing it to the lunar environment […]
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission is to be launched in 2024. Onboard that craft will be a German-French rover slated to land on the Martian moon Phobos and explore its surface for approximately three months. Prepatory landing tests for the rover’s touchdown on the Martian moon is underway at […]
The launch of Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket is slated to occur later this week, delivering NASA science investigations, supplies and equipment to the International Space Station. One payload: 60 pills to test how they cope with the rigors of space radiation and microgravity. The University of Adelaide is investigating how pharmaceutical tablet formulations […]
Scientists diving back into decades-old data collected by NASA’s Pioneer Venus spacecraft mission have found evidence for phosophine in the clouds of Venus – considered a potential biosignature for life. Pioneer Venus went into orbit around Venus in December 1978. The spacecraft made a destructive plunge into the planet’s atmosphere on October 8, 1992. Re-examine […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 2897 tasks. Nearly a month ago the rover team started taking Remote Micro-Imager (RMI) telescope images to study the stratigraphy of some sedimentary benches over 300 – 650 feet (100-200 meters) distant from the robot’s current location. Reports Roger Wiens, a geochemist at Los Alamos National Laboratory […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 2896 duties. Claire Newman, Atmospheric Scientist at Aeolis Research in Pasadena, California, reports that the rover regularly looks at the Martian atmosphere, making use of its Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument using a “Passive Sky” observation. “Among other things, this allows us to measure the amount of […]
How intense and hazardous to humans is cosmic radiation on the Moon? To be sure, any long-term stays on the Moon will expose astronauts’ bodies to high doses of radiation. An instrument provided by Germany onboard China’s Chang’e-4 farside lander has measured space radiation in temporal resolution for the first time on the lunar […]
