September 10th, 2020
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NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now carrying out Sol 2879 tasks. It is “opening night” at the rover’s current site, reports Scott Guzewich, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Ten sols ago was our final dress rehearsal and today’s plan is opening night for an experiment that […]
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China’s Chang’e-3 robotic Moon mission made a soft landing in late 2013, touching down in the northeast of Mare Imbrium, also called the Sea of Rains. The Xinhua news agency reports that payloads on that “retired” lunar probe remain operational after more than 2,400 days on the near side of the Moon. According to […]
Dribs and drabs best characterize news regarding China’s reusable experimental spacecraft program. A Long March-2F launch vehicle launched the craft from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, Gansu Province, northwest China, on September 4, 2020 followed by a September 6th landing, possibly at a lengthy airstrip near China’s Lop Nor nuclear test site. According to […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 2977 duties. Reports Lucy Thompson, a planetary geologist at the University of New Brunswick; Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada: “As we wait to drop the ‘Mary Anning 3’ drilled sample off to SAM [Sample Analysis at Mars Instrument Suite] (hopefully in the next plan), Curiosity will utilize the […]
China’s Chang’e-4 mission that landed in the Von Kármán crater on the Moon’s farside has determined the thickness of the regolith and revealed the fine subsurface structures and evolutionary history of the probe’s landing site. Carried by the Yutu-2 rover, a penetrating radar has found a three-unit substructure at the landing site. The data supports […]
Space Dogs from Icarus Films focuses on Laika, a stray dog picked up by the Soviet space program on the streets of Moscow. This dog became the first living being to orbit the Earth when she was launched into space on Sputnik 2. Although Laika would not survive the journey, directors Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter […]
China’s just-returned reusable spacecraft “may be like US’ X-37B, focusing on civilian use, tapping into space application potential,” experts say. That statement comes not from twitter-feeding and fueling appraisals but from China’s state-run Xinhua news agency. Following a flight of two days, the Chinese craft landed at a “designated site” on Sunday, “marking a breakthrough […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 2874 tasks. The word is that there’s been no sample drop-off to the rover’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) Instrument Suite. Ken Herkenhoff, Planetary Geologist at USGS Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, Arizona reports that the science team expected the weekend plan to include drop-off of […]
China’s space plane – ‘round and ‘round it goes – when and where it stops, nobody knows. China’s unpiloted and reusable experimental spacecraft was sent up on Friday (Beijing time) and continues to circuit the globe. China Aerospace Science and Technology (CAST) Corporation, the leading State-owned space conglomerate, said the robotic vehicle will stay in […]
The Congressional Research Service (CRS) has issued The Future of Space Tourism, taking a look at a variety of issues that will shape the promise of public space travel. Diving into the history and development of the space tourism sector, the report spotlights new entrants, such as Virgin Galactic, SpaceX, Blue Origin, and […]
