January 31st, 2019
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China’s Chang’e-4 lander and rover are in good shape following a cold spell on the Moon. They were put to sleep as night fell roughly two weeks ago at the Von Kármán crater landing site. The China National Space Administration (CNSA) announced on Thursday that the lander woke up at 8:39 pm Wednesday. The […]
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NASA’s InSight Mars lander is moving toward another deployment milestone in readying the probe for performing an agenda of scientific duties. The InSight team finished fine-tuning the cable position last Sunday, the tether link to the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) now in position on the surface of Mars. Operators are ready to […]
China is poised to reactivate this year Moon sample return via the country’s Chang’e-5 lunar mission. That prospective outing get’s the go-ahead depending on an upcoming return-to-flight of a Long March-5 carrier rocket this July. If that third flight is successful, the fourth Long March-5 carrier rocket will be tasked to send the Chang’e-5 […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now carrying out Sol 2305 duties. New imagery from the Red Planet prowler has been posted, including these photos:
An essential launcher for China’s future space station and Moon exploration plans is being readied for a July flight. The third Long March-5 takeoff follows a mishap of this booster-class on July 2, 2017. An intensive investigation was carried out to identify why the rocket failed less than six minutes after liftoff. China’s Xinhua news […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has just begun Sol 2304 duties, with Red Planet scientists looking forward to the clay-bearing unit that the robot is set to explore. Ryan Anderson, a planetary geologist at the USGS in Flagstaff, Arizona reports that the last weekend plan started off on Sol 2301 with some Mastcam atmospheric observations, […]
The secretive mission of a U.S. Air Force X-37B mini-space plane has winged past 500 days of flight. This robotic drone is performing classified duties during the program’s fifth flight. This mission – tagged as Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV-5) — was rocketed into Earth orbit on September 7, 2017 atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 […]
Apollo sample 14321 is a specimen collected during the Apollo 14 moonwalking mission in 1971 – and it may have a new story to tell. As the third lunar landing, Apollo 14 touched down in the Fra Mauro highlands on February 5, 1971. Commander Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell, lunar module pilot, made the mission’s […]
NASA’s Curiosity rover is now performing Sol 2301 tasks. “Curiosity is on the brink of descending down off the Vera Rubin Ridge (VRR) onto the clay-bearing unit,” reports Lucy Thompson, a planetary geologist at the University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. “We are hoping to ‘beam up’ lots of interesting new data […]
Another casualty of the government shutdown: The Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas. Founded at the height of the Apollo program in 1968, the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI) is pushing forward on its celebration this year of the 50th anniversary of Apollo and look to the future. Still, the message from LPI’s Louise […]
