May 5th, 2022
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A crowdsourcing competition, NASA MarsXR Challenge, seeks contributions to a Virtual Reality (XR) testbed environment that replicates the experiences and situations astronauts may encounter on Mars. HeroX, a leading platform and open marketplace for crowdsourced solutions, launched the challenge today. To facilitate research, development, and testing using virtual reality, NASA, in collaboration with Buendea, is […]
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Russia’s Roskosmos and the Rocket and Space Corporation (RKK) Energia have signed a contract for blueprinting a new orbital station. According to TASS, the largest Russian news agency, the work will be performed in two phases: Analysis of scenarios for deployment and the station’s inclination, including the scenario for undocking the active modules of the […]
NASA’s Perseverance rover that is exploring Jezero Crater may unload its first cache of collected samples, perhaps near year’s end. That prospect was highlighted during this week’s Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG) Meeting #39 being held in Denver, Colorado. Ken Farley of Caltech and the Mars 2020 Project Scientist said the Jezero cache should […]
“We have left the pediment behind and are making our way back to an alternate “MSAR” or “Mount Sharp Ascent Route,” reports Catherine O’Connell-Cooper, a planetary geologist at the University of New Brunswick; Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. “We are at the second (of three) observation stops for this area, chosen as they offer the best […]
Those bits and pieces of Mars expected to be brought back to Earth, perhaps in the early 2030s, will land with a thud in Utah desert. Those return samples are now being collected by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover. To test the Mars Sample Return (MSR) Earth Entry System (EES), engineers have carried out a series […]
Bringing home the goods from Mars – what’s your view? NASA and the European Space Agency are planning to use robotic Mars orbiter and lander missions to collect samples now being gathered by NASA’s Perseverance rover, busy at work on the Red Planet. These samples, securely isolated inside an “Earth Entry System” using a layered […]
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover at Gale Crater is now performing Sol 3459 duties. While angular, pointy rocks have damaged the rover’s wheels since early in its mission, sometimes the wheels damage rocks as the rover drives over them, reports Ken Herkenhoff, a planetary geologist at the USGS Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, Arizona. Bedrock […]
China’s Zhurong rover has worked on the surface of Mars for more than 300 days. The Tianwen-1 mission is the country’s first interplanetary outing, probe sending back a large amount of data, and is ready for more international cooperation on Mars, says a chief designer of the probe. In May 2021, China’s Mars […]
Of all places on Earth, Iceland is turning out to be a cold, but nearby testing zone for spacesuits, habitats and off-world terrain vehicles. But why there and what’s ahead in chipping away at research ideas that can furnish humanity a leg up on re-planting footprints on the Moon and start plotting out Mars habitation? […]
High-tech leftovers from the landing of NASA’s Perseverance rover on Mars have been imaged by the space agency’s Ingenuity helicopter. Taken during the rotorcraft’s 26th flight over Mars on April 19th, images show the Perseverance’s backshell (left of center), supersonic parachute (far right) – all caught on camera from an altitude of 26 feet […]
