January 18th, 2018
Author: 
Now in Sol 1938, NASA’s Curiosity rover is continuing its up-close looks at features of Vera Rubin Ridge. Positioned in location “e,” “it certainly seems that ‘e’ should stand for ‘exciting,’ as we’ve collected quite a rich set of observations at this location, including extensive imaging and geochemical analyses,” reports Rachel Kronyak, a planetary geologist […]
Posted in 
A hearing today of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, Subcommittee on Space, offers “An Update on NASA Commercial Crew Systems Development.” The purpose of the hearing today is to examine the development of the NASA’s two commercial crew systems, being built by Boeing and SpaceX, to service the International Space Station. The Government […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now in Sol 1936 and investigating location “e” – an informal site name but one that is stirring up excitement within the rover’s science team. That’s the word from Christopher Edwards, a planetary geologist from Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. Geologic story “The first thing the science team on shift […]
Entrance to an underground network of lava tubes on the Moon may have been found – perhaps an underground “watering hole” rife with ice for future explorers. Using NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), the discovery of small pits in a large crater near the Moon’s North Pole could indicate pathways to a subsurface system of […]
The newly issued Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel Annual (ASAP) Report for 2017 flags an impressive interactive tool: Significant Incidents and Close Calls in Human Spaceflight. This tool chronicles some 186 safety incidents going back to the 1960s and includes operations by SR-71 aircraft, the X-15, Russia’s Soyuz, the U.S. Space Shuttle and the […]
Now at the end of Sol 1933 operations, Curiosity has made it to “Region e” of the Vera Rubin Ridge (VRR) campaign, reports Mark Salvatore, a planetary geologist from the University of Michigan in Dearborn. “This location is a slight depression with exposed fractured bedrock that appears more ‘blue’ from orbit than the surrounding region,” […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is wrapping up Sol 1930 duties. Scott Guzewich, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland reports: “For the last several weeks, Curiosity has been hopping between areas of blue-ish toned rocks on the Vera Rubin Ridge and the results from these locations continue to become more […]
For believers in aliens visiting Earth’s friendly skies via Unidentified Flying Objects you couldn’t ask for more: A secretive government group backed by federal “black money,” a distressed and talkative former U.S. military intelligence official, fighter jet video of odd objects doing out-of-this-world maneuvers, and a space mogul purportedly housing leftovers of unidentified aerial […]
A leading Chinese space engineer has been reported to indicate that the country’s Tiangong-1 space lab is not out of control. “We have been continuously monitoring Tiangong-1 and expect to allow it to fall within the first half of this year,” explains Zhu Congpeng, an engineer at the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, notifying […]
The Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic — spun out of Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute in 2007 — is headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and has been working on developing a low-cost, lunar delivery service. According to the group, it has nearly a dozen “deals” for their first mission and dozens of customer negotiations for upcoming missions. Astrobotic is […]
