August 23rd, 2024
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The high drama of a “stranded” Starliner two-person crew needing “rescue” comes to a head in a wait-a-minute weekend. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and leadership will hold an internal Agency Test Flight Readiness Review on Saturday, Aug. 24, for NASA’s beleaguered Boeing Crew Flight Test. Right after that top leadership gathering, about an hour later, […]
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A new entry in the mega-constellation controversy has entered the Earth-circling satellite ring fray. “The new space race doesn’t need to create massive space waste,” suggests Lucas Gutterman of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group’s (PIRG) Education Fund. The central message is that more foresight and regulation is needed before our Earth’s orbit is crowded […]
A team of Chinese researchers are delving into techniques to extract water from the Moon – making use of lunar samples rocketed to Earth to pursue their investigation. According to China Central Television (CCTV), scientists at the Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering are looking into an approach that would be capable of yielding […]
Viewed as one of the oddest radio transmissions from afar ever detected, the famous “Wow! Signal” is cited as compelling evidence for extraterrestrial intelligence. It was back in 1977 that the Ohio State University Big Ear radio telescope detected the Wow! Signal, a long-standing and intriguing signal of extraterrestrial origin. But researchers from the […]
Part 1 of the first-ever lunar-Earth flyby, the European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) zipped by the Moon. Juice took these images with its onboard monitoring cameras just before midnight CEST on August 19, around its closest approach to the Moon. This successful flyby of the Moon slightly redirected Juice’s path […]
The European Space Agency spacecraft — the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) — zips by the Moon at 23:15 Central European Summer Time (CEST) tonight. Juice will then flyby Earth, zooming within the altitude of satellites in geostationary and medium-Earth orbits. For a select set of viewers with powerful binoculars or telescopes here on Earth, […]
NASA held another in a series of media briefings on August 14, providing an update on the continuing, complex, and sometimes confusing Boeing Crew Flight Test. Bottom line from NASA: “Mission managers continue to evaluate the Starliner spacecraft’s readiness in advance of decisional meetings no earlier than next week regarding the return of NASA […]
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover is busily scouting about at its Jezero Crater site and has collected seven cores of aqueously deposited sandstones and siltstones. These samples from the front of Jezero’s western fan are all likely older than the oldest signs of widespread life on Earth. The samples were collected by NASA’s Perseverance rover in […]
Data collected by NASA’s InSight Mars lander keeps on revealing the inner secrets of the Red Planet. While InSight’s mission ended in 2022, data relayed by the lander during its four-year mission suggests the presence of liquid water in the Red Planet’s crust. The Mars lander gathered information from the ground directly beneath it […]
\Researchers at Jilin University in northeast China are working on Moon and Mars rovers, ringing out functions of the machines for future missions. “We are here to test the interaction between the small wheels and lunar soil. Our goal is to make the rover go further and perform better on the surface of the moon,” […]
