August 4th, 2016
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China is dispatching two of its Long March II F or CZ-2F carrier rockets to the country’s Jiuquan launch site. They are being readied to support launch of the Tiangong-2 space laboratory and the Shenzhou-11 piloted spacecraft. According to a report on CCTV-Plus news, this is the first time that two CZ-2F rockets have been […]
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NASA’s 2020 Mars rover is to carry special cameras and microphones to capture stunning views and sounds of its barnstorming entry, descent and landing on the Red Planet. The hardware will not only give the public a unique ringside seat to exploration. Such equipment can also help engineers design future robotic and human landing systems […]
China’s Tiangong-2 space lab is being prepared for launch, a true “Space Lab” that will verify key technologies for building China’s space station, explains its chief designer, Zhu Zongpeng. Zhu explains in a new interview with China Central Television (CCTV) that the Tiangong-2 is being prepared for liftoff in the third quarter of this […]
Check out an up-close, podcast interview with Pascal Lee, co-founder and chairman of the Mars Institute, director of the NASA Haughton-Mars Project at NASA Ames Research Center, and senior planetary scientist at the SETI Institute. This summer marks Lee’s twentieth summer field trip on Devon Island, the largest uninhabited earth with geological evidence similar […]
NASA’s Curiosity rover has just entered Sol 1419 of its exploration of Mars. A scripted plan now being implemented is focused on setting up the robot for its next drill hole. “Originally there was going to be no science block at all, but we ended up with a little bit more power than expected,” […]
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation (FAA-AST) has awarded Virgin Galactic an operating license for SpaceShipTwo – a passenger-carrying suborbital space ship. In an August 1 statement from Virgin Galactic, Virgin Galactic Senior Vice President of Operations Mike Moses reports: “The granting of our operator license is an important milestone for […]
China’s lunar lander, Chang’e-3, with the country’s first lunar rover aboard, successfully landed on the moon on December 14, 2013. That event marked China’s first successful soft-landing on the surface of an extraterrestrial body. Chinese space officials noted last week that the lander has entered its 33rd dormancy period, calling it a record for the […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is presently at work on Sol 1417. Back on Sol 1414, the rover drove nearly 145 feet (44 meters), wheeling into an area with larger blocks of bedrock. “This looks like a good area to drill into the Murray Formation, so nearby targets were selected and we are planning a short […]
NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security – Regolith Explorer asteroid sample return mission is best called — for breathing purposes — as OSIRIS-REx). It is the first U.S. mission to collect a sample of an asteroid and return it to Earth for study. OSIRIS-REx is scheduled to be launched on September 8, 2016 […]
The global event series MARS, produced by Brian Grazer and Ron Howard, is landing on the TV watch list, premiering on the National Geographic Channel in 171 countries and 45 languages this November. National Geographic will extend the MARS storytelling in an unprecedented cross-platform effort, including a six-part digital companion prequel series. As part of […]
