January 16th, 2020
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Development of the world’s first kinetic launch system by SpinLaunch has received new investment. The launch system utilizes a large mass accelerator to provide on demand launches of small satellites in virtually any weather at an order of magnitude lower cost and higher frequency than any existing or proposed launch system, according to the group […]
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NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 2645 duties. “While descending from Western Butte, Curiosity has stopped to investigate a strange trough along the way,” reports Melissa Rice, a planetary geologist at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington. “In the images from orbit, it looks like someone drew a thick straight line with a […]
The use of lava tubes on Mars as emergency shelters and storage has been advanced by researchers at the Antarctic Institute of Canada. Lava tubes are formed from fast moving lava which later cools and forms roomy caves that might serve various functions for future human expeditions to the Red Planet. Svetozar Zirnov, Daniel Polo, […]
Later this year, China is slated to attempt the first Moon-sample return to Earth mission in over four decades. The candidate landing region for China’s Chang’e‐5 lunar sample return mission is the Rümker region, located in the northern Oceanus Procellarum. The area is geologically complex and known for its volcanic activity. There’s great science […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has entered Sol 2643 and is performing planned science tasks. “Curiosity is still on the shoulder of Western Butte at a location that provides a good vantage point, exposes changes in stratigraphy, and reveals some interesting float blocks in our workspace,” reports Lauren Edgar, a planetary geologist at the USGS Astrogeology […]
China’s Five-Hundred-Meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) has officially reached operational status. The world’s largest single-dish radio telescope is located in a naturally deep and round depression in southwestern China’s Guizhou Province. It is about 2.5 times more sensitive than the second-largest telescope in the world. Pulsars, fast radio bursts In a China Global […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now carrying out Sol 2641 tasks. “The Curiosity rover is still at the highest point it will reach on ‘Western Butte,’ having done a short bump to allow it to do contact science,” reports Roger Wiens, a geochemist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The rover […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 2639 tasks. When planning began for Sol 2639, the robot’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) Instrument Suite was still marked sick, so the strategically planned bump from one place to another was replaced with targeted science. That’s the word from Kenneth Herkenhoff, a planetary geologist at USGS […]
The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) has issued its Annual Report for 2019 to the U.S. Congress and NASA. The report is based on the Panel’s 2019 fact-finding and insight visits; quarterly public meetings; direct observations of NASA operations and decision-making; discussions with NASA management, employees, and contractors; and the Panel members’ past experiences. Excitement […]
Where do short, dramatic bursts of radio light seen across the universe originate from? Labeled as fast radio bursts (FRBs), these are mysterious extragalactic events. Although FRBs last for only a thousandth of a second, there are now hundreds of records of these enigmatic sources. New news is that telescopes in the European VLBI Network […]
