May 13th, 2018
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The first phase of China’s bid to land a robotic mission on the far side of the Moon is reportedly nearing launch. A projected May 21 launch of a Long March-4C booster is topped by a relay satellite named Queqiao (Magpie Bridge). This spacecraft is to be dispatched into a halo orbit of the Earth-Moon […]
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New research finds breathing lunar dust could cause health problems for astronauts spending long periods of time on the Moon. Researchers at New York’s Stony Brook University find simulated lunar soil is toxic to human lung and mouse brain cells. Up to 90 percent of human lung cells and mouse neurons died when exposed to […]
The Mars Helicopter, a small, autonomous rotorcraft, will travel with the agency’s Mars 2020 rover mission, currently scheduled to launch in July 2020, to demonstrate the viability and potential of heavier-than-air vehicles on the Red Planet. Started in August 2013 as a technology development project at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Mars Helicopter had to […]
Over a span of 20 years, the vision of an international orbiting outpost—one with continuous human presence, measuring the size of a football field, and orbiting the Earth every 90 minutes—became a reality. The International Space Station (ISS) has been labeled an engineering miracle – a facility that also expresses vision, leadership, perseverance, political […]
NASA’s Exploration Campaign calls for establishment of U.S. preeminence in cislunar space through the operations and the deployment of a U.S.-led Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway. Together with the Space Launch System (SLS) and the Orion spacecraft, the Gateway has been deemed central to advancing and sustaining human space exploration goals. NASA sees it as a unifying […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now in Sol 2048 after completing a successful bump, a short drive that was slated for Sol 2046, reports Ken Herkenhoff, a planetary geologist at the USGS in Flagstaff, Arizona. The robot is now in a good position for contact science on a couple of bright blocks in front of […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is carrying out Sol 2047 duties. Reports Scott Guzewich, an atmospheric scientist at NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland: “In Curiosity-speak, a ‘bump’ is a short drive the rover performs to better position itself for a particular science investigation…often contact science with the rover’s arm.” A recent plan included such […]
The move is on to pull together a robotic sample return from Mars mission. A new video details how such an undertaking would be staged. It would require at least three missions from Earth and one never-been-done-before rocket launch from Mars. A first mission already being built is NASA’s 2020 Mars Rover. This robot […]
Orbital ATK has released a new video showing its vision for the next step toward human space missions employing its Cygnus advanced maneuvering spacecraft as a human habitat in cislunar space, the region between the Moon and Earth. In the early 2020s, Orbital ATK says it would launch the initial habitat on NASA’s Space […]
A House Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) Appropriations Subcommittee bill provides a record $21.5 billion for NASA. That bill released late yesterday “fully funds the requested amounts for robotic and human exploration of the Moon, including $504.2 million for the lunar orbital platform; $116.5 million for advanced lunar and surface capabilities; $218 million for planetary science, including rovers […]
