September 10th, 2018
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NASA’s Curiosity rover is now performing Sol 2167 duties. The plan called for the rover to make a “bump” – that is, a drive of roughly 50 feet (15 meters) reports Lucy Thompson, a planetary geologist at the University of New Brunswick; Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. That drive was to place the robot, […]
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They have been characterized as tattoos on the Moon. Better known as lunar swirls, they resemble bright, snaky clouds painted on the Moon’s dark surface. The most famous, called Reiner Gamma, is about 40 miles long. Most lunar swirls share their locations with powerful, localized magnetic fields. The bright-and-dark patterns may result when those magnetic […]
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) Hayabusa2 asteroid mission is busy at work, in position at asteroid Ryugu. Imagery shows the temperature differences on asteroid Ryugu’s surface during one rotation, with red indicating regions with a high temperature. Distinct regions at different temperatures are captured by the Thermal InfraRed Imager (TIR). Features in […]
NASA’s Curiosity rover is now in Sol 2165. A new road map has been issued showing the robot’s wheeling about Mars since landing in August 2012. The map shows the route driven by NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity through the 2163 Martian day, or sol, of the rover’s mission on Mars (September 07, 2018). […]
To answer significant questions about planetary systems, such as whether our solar system is a rare phenomenon or if life exists on planets other than Earth, NASA should lead a large direct imaging mission – an advanced space telescope – capable of studying Earth-like exoplanets orbiting stars similar to the sun, says […]
A novel trial-run to help design a space elevator is headed for the International Space Station, an investigation that’s onboard Japan’s H-IIB Vehicle No. 7. That cargo resupply ship is scheduled for launch from the Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima Prefecture on September 11th. The test equipment has been produced by researchers at Shizuoka […]
Continued exploration of Pluto is advocated in a community White Paper on the case for Pluto follow on missions, and most particularly a Pluto orbiter. Now being circulated is “A White Paper on Pluto Follow on Missions: Background, Rationale, and New Mission Recommendations.” An executive summary explains: “The exploration of the binary Pluto-Charon and […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 2162 duties. Mars researchers have recently been handling gobs of data from Curiosity thanks to extra downlink from two orbiters, reports Dawn Sumner, a planetary geologist from the University of California Davis in Davis, California. “We planned 4 sols due to the Labor Day weekend.” “Usually, we […]
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is starting to earnestly evaluate space resources. Since the 1870’s they’ve dealt with the Earth, but now attention is being paid to assay what benefits may or may not exist in tapping extraterrestrial water, minerals and metals. Some asteroid resource advocates, for example, trot out pie-in-the-sky estimates of trillions of […]
China’s commercial space group, LandSpace Technology Corporation (蓝箭, Blue Arrow), is getting ready to launch its first rocket ZQ-1 (朱雀一号, ZhuQue-1). The company’s headquarter is located in Huzhou City, Zhejiang Province, east China, with the final assembly of the rocket taking place in Xi’an City, Shaanxi Province, northwest China. According to Zhang Changwu (CEO/LandSpace), […]
