June 2nd, 2017
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The European Space Agency (ESA) has launched a new General Studies Program called “Conceiving a Lunar Base Using 3D Printing Technologies.” At the heart of the study is to find ways of creating habitable structures using all resources available at the destination – the Moon. The study is looking into additive manufacturing (or 3D printing) […]
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NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is carrying out Sol 1712 science duties. Unfortunately the rover’s Sol 1713 activities were not uplinked due to an issue at the Deep Space Network (DSN) station, reports Lauren Edgar, a planetary geologist at the USGS in Flagstaff, Arizona. A new plan has been scripted, focused on recovering the activities […]
Evidence is stacking up from NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars that an ancient lake in Gale Crater would have provided multiple opportunities for different types of microbes to survive. Early rover findings point to the presence of a lake more than three billion years old in the crater. New research suggests that the lake […]
Mars has been found to have had liquid water much longer than previously believed. This new finding further expands the window for when life might have existed on Mars. However, whether this groundwater could have sustained life remains to be seen. The new finding is reported in a paper published today in Geophysical Research Letters, […]
An eye-catching reentry of a Chinese rocket body was viewed by aircraft pilots winging their way over the Atlantic Thanks to a Facebook posting by Dutch pilot, Christaan van Heijst, he has shared in-flight images of the space junk plowing through the atmosphere, as seen from the cockpit May 27. […]
As 2020 draws closer, look for an armada of international spacecraft launching that have Mars in their respective target sights – including a prospective takeoff of Elon Musk’s SpaceX uncrewed Red Dragon capsule. Although details of the SpaceX Red Dragon thrust and thirst for Mars is spotty, one landing site is known to be under […]
Author and space philosopher Frank White coined the phrase “the Overview Effect” and defined it as “a cognitive shift in awareness” linked to “the experience of seeing first-hand the reality that the Earth is in space.” The first international Overview Symposium is being held June 9-10 in Kerkrade, the Netherlands. The setting is the […]
Now in Sol 1708, NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is inspecting “White Ledge” along with “an otherworldly jumble of in-place bedrock, tilted rocks, sand with small ripples, and local pebbly debris piles,” reports Roger Wiens, Curiosity’s Chemistry & Camera (ChemCam) principal investigator at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. “Vera Rubin Ridge continues […]
Earlier this month, former Apollo astronauts, current and former NASA administrators, space managers and engineers, and an expert on space law were among the panelists on the Ohio State University (OSU) campus for the Armstrong Space Symposium. The May 8 event preceded the formal installation of aerospace innovator John M. Horack as the university’s […]
Now in Sol 1707, the NASA Curiosity Mars rover recently completed a drive of 48 feet (14.6 meters). Following that drive, scientists decided against robot arm activities due to a lack of compelling targets and in deference to making the next drive longer. Bedrock science Michael Battalio, an atmospheric scientist at Texas A&M University reports […]
