December 21st, 2019
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U.S. President Trump has signed the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act and with it, directed the establishment of the U.S. Space Force as the sixth branch of the armed forces. The U.S. Space Force (USSF) will be stood-up over the next 18 months. In signing ceremonies at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland on December 20th, President […]
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NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now wrapping up Sol 2620 tasks. “All dressed up…and no data to (touch and) go on,” reports Michelle Minitti, a planetary geologist at Framework in Silver Spring, Maryland Curiosity handlers were anxiously awaiting the images from the end of the rover’s drive of 66 feet (20 meters) further up “Western […]
Those perplexing recurring slope lineae (RSL) on Mars might be explored in the future by a Pop-Up Flat Folding Explorer Rover. The idea was detailed at the recent American Geophysical Union’s Fall Meeting held in San Francisco. According to an abstract overview by Kalind Carpenter and his colleagues, definitive confirmation of current liquid water activity […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now wrapping up Sol 2619 duties. New imagery from the robot includes these picturesque photos:
The nominal plan for Curiosity was to do a touch (contact science) and go (drive), as well as science observations with instruments located on the rover’s mast, reports Lucy Thompson, a planetary geologist at University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, Canada. “However, we made a decision early on during planning to forgo the contact science in […]
NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars is now performing Sol 2613 duties. “Curiosity is approaching another unconformity—or maybe it is a distant part of the same one. A large sloping surface called Greenheugh pediment looms ahead, past Western Butte,” reports Roger Wiens, a geochemist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. “Part of the exploration […]
