December 31st, 2023
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China is spotlighting the completion of the Number 1 launch pad of the country’s first commercial spacecraft launch site, in the city of Wenchang, on south China’s island province of Hainan – the dedicated site for China’s new-generation medium-sized rocket, Long March 8. The Long March-8 carrier rocket is a new-generation medium-sized launch vehicle mainly […]
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One of the driving questions regarding future Moon exploration is what available resources lurk within lunar permanently shadowed regions (PSRs). These locales never see direct sunlight and are illuminated only by secondary illumination – light reflected from nearby topography. Trying to get to the literal bottom of PSRs and what if any water ice may […]
The debris from a 2021 anti-satellite test created complications for satellites at higher altitudes, including SpaceX’s Starlink “megaconstellation.” According to SpaceX, over 1700 of the 6873 collision avoidance maneuvers performed by its satellites in the six months from December 1, 2021 to May 31, 2022 were due to Cosmos 1408 debris, produced by Russia’s destructive […]
The Moon’s farside needs protection! Because Earth’s neighboring celestial body has the distinctive property of naturally shielding radio waves generated by chatter on Earth and around it, researchers are calling for a radio silence zone, dubbing it a Shielded Zone on the Moon, or SZM in lunar lingo. Next year, the first International Congress of […]
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has announced the arrival at the Moon of the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM). JAXA said the spacecraft was successfully inserted into lunar orbit at 16:51 (Japan Standard Time, JST) on December 25, 2023. The lunar orbit of SLIM will be inserted into an elliptical lunar orbit connecting […]
Update: No reports of interference of Santa Claus by China’s space plane. About that robotic China space plane now circling Earth! I woke up this morning worried about possible consequences of this winged warrior of an experimental vehicle fouling up the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD’s) ability to track Santa Claus. One satellite […]
Japan’s Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) is approaching lunar orbit. SLIM was launched September 7, departing Earth atop an H-IIA launch vehicle from the Yoshinobu Launch Complex at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) Tanegashima Space Center. The SLIM project aims to demonstrate pinpoint landing and obstacle detection techniques for touching down on the […]
Update: “We won’t know if the flight took place as scheduled until early Jan downlink” – JPL message to Inside Outer Space. Imagery from NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter has been posted, photography that was acquired on December 22 – the projected 70th aerial dance above the Red Planet at Jezero Crater. The images were taken […]
The first extravehicular activity of the Shenzhou-17 mission was completed on December 21, spacewalks by Hongbo Tang, commander and Shengjie Tang that lasted nearly 7.5 hours outside the Wentian Laboratory Module of China’s space station. Astronaut Xinlin Jiang assisted the twosome from inside the Tianhe Core Module. The astronauts completed a set of tasks, including […]
NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter is on the glide path for flight #70! According to a Jet Propulsion Lab posting the expected flight date was slated to be December 22. If all goes according to plan, or already went well, the horizontal flight distance by the mini-chopper would be nearly 850 feet (258.735 meters), with an […]
