July 3rd, 2017
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SpaceX’s Dragon cargo spacecraft returned to Earth today, loaded with science samples including the first Chinese experiment to fly onboard the International Space Station. China’s Xinhua news agency reports that the experiment from the Beijing Institute of Technology was aimed at studying the effects of the space radiation environment on DNA and the changes in […]
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NASA is moving forward on the first-ever mission to demonstrate an asteroid deflection technique for planetary defense – the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission. But there are a few hurdles to overcome. While current law directs the development of the DART mission, DART is not identified as a specific budget item in the Administration’s […]
Remarks by President Trump in signing an Executive Order on the National Space Council in the Roosevelt Room, June 30, 2017: Thank you very much to our great Vice President and also for the fantastic job that Mike has been doing. The future of American space leadership — we’re going to lead again. It’s […]
China’s Long March-5 Y2 carrier rocket is being readied for a Sunday launch at Wenchang Space Launch Center in south China’s Hainan Province. The process of filling propellant into the booster’s fuel tanks began on Saturday afternoon. The powerful rocket is to hurl into geosynchronous orbit the Shijian-18 communication satellite, China’s largest spacecraft, for a […]
Admittedly, it’s a mouthful: the Managed, Reconfigurable, In-space Nodal Assembly. Call it MARINA for short. MARINA is a winning design created by an interdisciplinary team of MIT graduate students representing five departments across the Institute. Designed as a commercially owned and operated space station, MARINA features a luxury hotel as the primary anchor tenant and […]
NASA is pursuing several in-space propulsion technologies to advance not only human exploration, but also uncrewed spacecraft operations. The hearing will explore NASA’s current portfolio of investments in in-space propulsion technologies, the state of the various technologies, and how they fit into future space architectures. Hearing: In-Space Propulsion […]
NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars is carrying out Sol 1741 science tasks. Curiosity recently drove roughly 112 feet (34 meters) to the east to position itself just north of a large field of ripples. The robot is moving closer to ascending the iron oxide-bearing Vera Rubin Ridge. Gaze ahead “As Curiosity progresses towards the east, […]
Space for Humanity is a just-announced non-profit organization that will select a non-astronaut to travel to the edge of space at the end of 2018. The organization was launched at NewSpace 2017, being held this week in San Francisco. As part of the group’s rollout, Space for Humanity is accepting applications for diverse individuals […]
A UK-based deep-sea and space training center is being pursued and will make use of state-of-the-art facilities to reduce risk, improve performance and aid exploration in extreme environments. Called Blue Abyss, the commercial center would provide state-of-the-art facilities designed to be the world’s most comprehensive deep-sea and space training, research and development center. The […]
Now in Sol 1739, NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover presses onward to Vera Rubin Ridge reports Abigail Fraeman, a planetary geologist at NASA/JPL in Pasadena, California. This past weekend, Curiosity continued to journey east along the contact between the lower portion of Vera Rubin Ridge and the Murray formation with a drive that was a little […]
