January 11th, 2019
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Chang’e-4 views its landing site, including the Yutu-2 rover just to the south, in the first panorama taken after landing, on January 10, 2019. Go to: http://www.360cities.net/image/first-lunar-far-side-panorama-change-4 China’s CGTN has posted new imagery of China’s Chang’e-4 probe and its rover Yutu-2. The lunar twosome took photos of each other on Friday. […]
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The Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory issued impressive videos – “Summiting the Solar System” – that spotlights the voyage of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft and the flyby a small Kuiper Belt Object known scientifically as 2014 MU69, but nicknamed “Ultima Thule.” Ultima, four billion miles from Earth, is the most ancient and […]
China’s Yutu-2 lunar rover has been reactivated on Thursday, following a planned “nap,” reports China’s Global Television Network, or CGTN. “China’s space engineers care about the reactivation as the last model [Yutu-1] failed its first awakening in February 2014,” CGTN said. Chang’e-4 landed on January 3 within the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) Basin, the largest […]
Invite to the Colorado space community Join me in a special presentation I’ll be giving concerning Our Future on the Red Planet (and on the Moon too!) Wednesday, January 16, 2019 Chautauqua Community House 900 Baseline Road Boulder, CO 80302 Doors: 6:30 PM Showtime: 7:00 PM Tickets: $12.00 ($9.00 Concert Member)* […]
Technosearch is a new-web-based tool that includes all published Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) listen and look-sees from 1960 until the present. The tool also allows users to submit their own searches and keep the database current. Keeping it current Jill Tarter, SETI pioneer and co-founder of the SETI Institute, has launched Technosearch: “I started […]
New ideas for an interstellar probe are percolating. Ambitious science and strategic plans are being formulated for the fastest flight ever out of our solar system, almost six times faster than the milestone making Voyager 1 spacecraft. With the goal of reaching 90 billion miles from the Sun, this robotic explorer would push the limits […]
Russian engineer, Yuri Artsutanov, known as one of the fathers of the modern space elevator program, died earlier this month. Artsutanov’s proposal, created in the early 1960s, used newly discovered graphite whiskers to propose an Elevator to Space using cables attached to a satellite, and running in both directions. Eifel tower inspiration The concept of […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is currently performing Sol 2284 tasks. “It’s a wonderful day for SAM,” reports Vivian Sun, a planetary geologist at NASA/JPL in Pasadena, California. The rover is continuing a drill campaign at the red Jura target “Rock Hall.” The plan called for drop-off of the Rock Hall sample to the SAM (Sample […]
China’s Chang’e-4 mission to the farside of the Moon is expected to provide “breakthrough findings.” As the lander and the recently dispatched Yutu-2 rover survey their lunar surroundings, important discoveries are on tap. “The farside of the Moon has very unique features, and has never been explored in situ, so Chang’e-4 might bring us breakthrough […]
Now in Sol 2081, a set of holiday science duties were completed by NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover, reports Claire Newman, an Atmospheric Scientist at Aeolis Research in Pasadena, California. The holiday planning completed successfully and included 10 sols of five-hour-long morning meteorological observations by the Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS), Newman adds, during the […]
