November 22nd, 2019
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NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has just started performing 2594 Sol tasks. Reports Catherine O’Connell, a planetary geologist at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada: “We are putting Central Butte behind us now, as we journey onwards to Western Butte, a nearby hill that appears to be similar to Central Butte. At […]
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Where were you two years ago? “We know where the Boeing-made X-37B was — making its way into space,” explains a posting on Watch U.S. Fly – “a community of Americans dedicated to keeping America the world’s best manufacturer of aircraft, spacecraft and defense products” and posts info on space-based national defense. “Why does that […]
On the Moon “lunar swirls” are bright features that can be tens of miles across and appear as isolated individuals or in extensive groups or belts. Lunar swirls are found where the lunar crust is magnetized, although not all magnetic areas have swirls. Furthermore, the bright areas in the swirls look to be less weathered […]
From Ohio University: “Aw, Nuts! We’re having trouble locating the page you requested. There may be a typo in the URL, or the page may have been moved or deleted.” From AAAS and EurekAlert!: “This release has been removed at the request of the submitter.” These actions were stirred up by researcher William Romoser, Emeritus Professor […]
China’s Chang’e-4 farside lander and rover have “self-awakened” on Thursday. The exploration twosome have entered their 12th lunar day within the Von Karman Crater in the South Pole-Aitken Basin, according to the Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center of the China National Space Administration. Stable state The Yutu-2 rover woke up at 0:51 a.m. Beijing […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is wrapping up Sol 2592 duties. “Curiosity is continuing her exploration of Central Butte, focusing on characterizing the lithology of ledge-forming rocks in this area,” reports Lauren Edgar, a planetary geologist at the USGS Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, Arizona. A recently drafted plan has the robot carrying out several Chemistry […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now carrying out Sol 2591 tasks. Reports Fred Calef, a planetary geologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Curiosity’s Central Butte campaign continues and the rover is traversing along an ever narrowing ledge. “To continue forward, we need to take a few steps back and make a U-turn around to a […]
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have made one of the highest-performance cameras ever composed of sensors that count single photons, or particles of light. With more than 1,000 sensors — or pixels — NIST’s camera may be useful in future space-based telescopes searching for chemical signs of life on other […]
Pit Boss is an autonomous mission management system for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Blackjack satellite constellation. DARPA’s Blackjack constellation is designed to operate in low Earth orbit. It will network sensors together with a goal to provide persistent global coverage for many applications, including missile warning. Raytheon is designing Pit Boss that […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover is now performing Sol 2589 tasks. Reports Roger Wiens, noted geochemist at Los Alamos National Laboratory: “After the ‘butte-iful’ location and view of sols 2585-2586, Curiosity descended back down from its perch on ‘Central butte’ and skirted its steep side,” Wiens explains. The robot now has another butte in view, “Western […]
