April 19th, 2019
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Luxembourg-based Intelsat reports that its Intelsat 29e (IS29e) is now a total loss, reporting earlier that the spacecraft suffered an anomaly. Late on April 7, the Intelsat 29e propulsion system experienced damage that caused a leak of the propellant on board the satellite resulting in a service disruption to customers on the satellite. That event […]
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If you want boots on Mars by 2033, forget it. A new study has found that a 2033 departure date for a Mars orbital mission is “infeasible under all budget scenarios and technology development and testing schedules.” However, 2035 may be possible under budgets that match 1.9 percent real growth, but carries high risks of […]
Next week, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) will attempt to look for the crash site of Israel’s Beresheet Moon lander. The spacecraft careened into the lunar surface on April 11, a crash landing apparently due to a “manual command” that was entered into the spacecraft’s computer. “This led to a chain reaction in the spacecraft, […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 2380 duties. The science team has been focused on determining which target in the vicinity of “Aberlady” will become the focus of the next drill campaign, reports Brittney Cooper, an atmospheric scientist at York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Target 3 “In the end, target 3 […]
A preliminary investigation of what caused Israel’s Beresheet crash landing on the Moon April 11 has found it appears that a “manual command” was entered into the spacecraft’s computer. “This led to a chain reaction in the spacecraft, during which the main engine switched off, which prevented it from activating further,” according to a SpaceIL […]
NASA’s plan to plant boots on the Moon is underway – and the call is to send astronauts to the Moon’s South Pole by 2024. The floors of polar craters there reach frigid temperatures because they’re permanently in shadow. “The South Pole is far from the Apollo landing sites clustered around the equator, so it […]
A Russian entrepreneurial group – StartRocket — has got its eyes on the sky – to create an in-orbit system that would allow advertisements, logos, special product offerings and messages to be constantly posted. Making use of a cluster of cubesats, the orbital display can reach a potential audience of 7 billion – everyone on […]
China is on the verge of selecting new crew members for its space station program. To date, a total of 11 taikonauts or Chinese astronauts have gone into space. As reported by China Global Television Network (CGTN), Huang Weifen, who is in charge of training taikonauts, explains that China plans to select three individuals for […]
A NASA piggyback experiment may have survived the April 11 crash landing of Israel’s Moon lander, Beresheet. Overflight of the crash site by the U.S. space agency’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) should provide imagery of the impact area. Additionally, an LRO-carried Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) will attempt to detect a NASA-provided laser retro-reflector array […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover is now performing Sol 2376 science duties. The Mars robot continues the sequence of drill activities at “Aberlady” reports Vivian Sun, a planetary geologist at NASA/JPL in Pasadena, California, Mars researchers will be collecting Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) data of the dump pile with two offset observations “to […]
