August 31st, 2020
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NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 2869 duties. “Curiosity has been in the area of the ‘Mary Anning’ targets for a while now, and that’s for a very good reason,” reports Susanne Schwenzer, a planetary geologist at The Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom. The rover came to find the ideal rocks for […]
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Explore Mars, Inc. has issued its annual report — The Humans to Mars Report (H2MR) — presenting a snapshot of current progress in mission architectures, science, domestic and international policy, human factors, STEAM Education, and public perception regarding human missions to Mars. The document highlights progress and challenges from year to year. “The momentum […]
In Pursuit of the Moon – The Hunt for a Major NASA Contract by Bill Townsend; iUniverse – a self-publishing imprint; 168 pages; 2019; Softcover; $13.99. This is a tell-all story that’s rarely told. The author takes the reader deep inside the inner-workings of a real-life aerospace industry pursuit – vying for the ARES I […]
Possible collisions between orbital debris and satellites can be detected at an early stage and evasive maneuvers can be initiated – that’s the promise of a new ability to spot space clutter during the day. According to researchers at the University of Bern’s Zimmerwald Observatory they are the first in the world to succeed in […]
The clouds of Venus may be a depot for life. New research has looked into the prospect that microbial life could reside inside protective cloud droplets (sulfuric acid mixed with water) hovering high above that hellish world. The new work is led by Sara Seager in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences at […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now carrying out Sol 2865 duties. “Mars is often a very dynamic place due to its atmosphere and how it interacts with the surface,” explains Claire Newman, Atmospheric Scientist at Aeolis Research in Pasadena, California. “At present, we’re in the “windy season” in Gale crater.” This means, continues Newman, “that […]
There is a multi-country Moon rush in progress. Case in point is NASA orchestrating the Artemis program of robotic and human lunar exploration. Then there’s China, preparing this year to hurl a go-getting return sample mission to the Moon, joining still-active Chinese lander/rover machinery on the lunar farside. Other nations, such as Japan and […]
Extraterrestrials by Wade Roush; The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series; Cambridge, Massachusetts; 224 pages; published April 2020; $15.95. This is an engaging and an excellent tutorial on life elsewhere – always anchored in that are we alone in the universe, and if we are not, where are they? Containing 5 chapters, the book is […]
The lander and rover of China’s Chang’e-4 lunar farside mission have resumed operations for the 21st lunar day. A lunar day is equal to 14 days on Earth, and a lunar night is the same length. Chinese news groups note that the lander woke up at 14:54 Thursday (Beijing Time) while the rover awoke at […]
Welcome to the crowded and cluttered space skies above Earth…congested, contested, competitive, inspected, and dejected. Orbiting riff-raff continues be a daunting problem – with a new study released on August 20 focused on space traffic management, or STM for short. Space Traffic Management: Assessment of the Feasibility, Expected Effectiveness, and Funding Implications of […]
