August 31st, 2017
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Now performing Sol 1802 duties, NASA’s Curiosity’s Mars rover drove on Sol 1801 bringing it to an excellent location for contact and remote science as part of a 3-sol plan that sets up the robot for a long Labor Day weekend. That’s the report from Rachel Kronyak, a planetary geologist from the University of Tennessee […]
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The “Breakthrough Listen” campaign, a project to find signs of intelligent life in the universe, has detected 15 fast radio bursts (FRBs) emanating from the mysterious “repeater” FRB 121102. Could these brief, bright pulses of radio emission from distant galaxies be signatures of extraterrestrial technology? Breakthrough Listen is a global astronomical initiative launched in 2015 […]
NASA’s Curiosity rover is in the early hours of performing Sol 1801 duties. As the robot moves forward to ascend Vera Rubin Ridge, new imagery is helping scientists better understand how the ridge formed.
NASA is blueprinting its beyond Mars 2020 rover plans, focusing on returning samples from the Red Planet. In a “Review of Progress Toward Implementing the Decadal Survey Vision and Voyages for Planetary Sciences” briefing yesterday at the J. Erik Jonsson Woods Hole Center in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s Science Mission Directorate Associate […]
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) used its LROC imaging system to look back at Earth and snag imagery during the Great American Solar Eclipse on August 21. As LRO crossed the lunar south pole heading north at 3,579 miles per hour (1600 meters per second, the shadow of the Moon was racing across the United […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now closing out Sol 1799 duties. The robot drove some 76 feet (23.3 meters) over the weekend bringing the robot even closer to the area it will ascend Vera Rubin Ridge. “We have reached the point in the traverse where we are no longer headed east along the […]
A humanoid robot that can be used for future Mars exploration has been operated from the International Space Station (ISS). On August 25, Italian ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli remote-controlled the “Rollin’ Justin” robot, research work underway at the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR). Delegate duties The effort is designed to […]
I am delighted to announce that I’ll be talking at Seattle’s Museum of Flight, an event being held Saturday, October 7, 2017, 5:30 PM – 8:30 PM. My talk is being staged at the Charles Simonyi Space Gallery at the Museum of Flight – the largest independent, non-profit air and space museum in the […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 1798 science duties. In newly released data from Curiosity, scientists report a potential history of hydrothermal activity at Gale Crater on the Red Planet, a finding that broadens the variety of habitable conditions once present there. The new study has been published in the Journal of […]
There’s a biological battle brewing involving life on Mars, decades-old Viking Mars data, projected return to Earth of Martian samples, as well as future robotic looks for life on ocean-worlds. At the nexus of the debate is whether or not planetary protection rules are stifling our exploratory space missions. Loosen restrictions? For example, in […]
