October 24th, 2019
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“We have made important progress in our attempts to get the mole digging again…in fact, we got it digging again!” That’s the word from Tilman Spohn of the German Aerospace Center’s (DLR) Institute of Planetary Research in Berlin. He’s the experiment leader on the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3), the self-hammering “mole” designed […]
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NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has once again imaged the area where India’s Chandrayaan-2 Vikram Moon lander failed to successfully touch down. LRO imaged the targeted landing site on October 14 but did not observe any evidence of the lander. Change detection technique The LRO camera team carefully examined the images and employed the change […]
Think of it as a flash back message from the Apollo moonwalkers. The Moon is a Disneyland of dust. Between 1969 and the end of 1972, a dozen astronauts kicked up the powdery regolith, the topside dirt of the Moon. Apollo aroma Apollo expedition members could not escape tracking lunar material inside their Moon […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 2560 duties. Reports Susanne Schwenzer, a planetary geologist at The Open University, Milton Keynes, U.K., due to no reception of “decisional data” from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars rover teams decided to make the best use of the time and energy available using the untargeted […]
Houston: Space City USA by Ray Viator; Texas A&M University Press, College Station, Texas, 2019; hardcover: 224 pp. 222 color, 6 b&w photos, $37.00. Given the development of new spaceports around the world, this volume celebrates Houston, Texas as “mission control” for America’s on-going spaceflight program. Recall those words from Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong on […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now carrying out Sol 2559 duties. “Our drive away from our long-time home at the “Glen Etive” drilling site was successful, and set us up nicely at our next exploration site, one of the “Culbin Sands” megaripples,” reports Michelle Minitti, a planetary geologist at Framework in Silver Spring, Maryland. Scuff […]
The China Manned Space Agency is pressing forward on its space station construction plans, “hiring” individuals to help shape the country’s next phase of human spaceflight. China’s Xinhua news agency reports that preparations are underway for the upcoming “high-density” space missions to construct China’s space station. Additionally, the Long March-5B carrier rocket is set […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 2558 tasks. The rover has made a wheel scuff at “Culbin Sands,” reports Fred Calef, a planetary geologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Curiosity purposely ran over a megaripple (fine grained sandy ripple with a coarser pebble coating), Calef notes, to create a “scuff” which churned […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 2557. Reports Ashley Stroupe, Mission Operations Engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the rover is taking its last views of the Glen Etive 2 drill sample. A recent plan had the robot cleaning out the remaining sample within the drill and doing contact science analysis […]
Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) in Louisville, Colorado has received the largest piece of technology to make up Dream Chaser. It’s the most advanced high-temperature composite space frame ever built, according to SNC. Reports Eren Ozmen, chairwoman and president of SNC: “Our team has been looking forward to this day for a long time so […]
