The last time the planetary science community came together to conduct a decadal survey, Mars was ascendant. NASA had flown a series of Mars missions and was working on its most ambitious rover yet, Curiosity. The decadal survey endorsed continuing that Mars exploration strategy by backing a mission to collect samples as the first step to returning those samples to Earth.
NASA said May 20 it expects to roll out the SLS from the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center to Launch Complex 39B in early June for the next attempt at a wet dress rehearsal (WDR), where the vehicle is filled with liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen propellants and goes through a countdown that stops just before ignition of the core stage’s four RS-25 engines.
New for 2022, the tau Herculid meteor shower may make an appearance on the night of May 30-31.
At a briefing about the mission, which has been on the surface of Mars since November 2018, project leaders said science operations will likely end in July as the output of the spacecraft’s two solar panels, coated with dust, drops below critical levels. Increasing dust levels in the atmosphere from seasonal changes are exacerbating the power decline.
Kongsberg ordered the satellites from Lithuania’s NanoAvionics for a 2024 launch. The satellites will have instruments Kongsberg has developed to detect Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponders, which all passenger ships and most ocean-going vessels above a certain tonnage must carry by law.
NASA released May 17 a set of high-level objectives for its lunar and Mars exploration campaign. The agency also announced it was soliciting input on those objectives through its website until May 31.
The so-called Phase 1 satellite connected through a teleport operated by local satellite communications provider Nelco, which is part of Indian conglomerate Tata. South Korea’s Intellian supplied the 85-centimeter parabolic antenna used in the April 25-29 demo.
No, this is NOT a doorway for Martians. Although the internet erupted on Thursday after a photograph from NASA’s Curiosity rover appeared to show an “alien door,” experts are pretty sure it’s just a natural feature of the Martian landscape.
A space rock discovered more than two decades ago may be the first physical evidence of a rare type of powerful stellar explosion called a Type Ia supernova, according to a new study.
Under the firm-fixed-price contracts awarded by NASA, NOAA’s partner for the acquisition, each company will receive approximately $5 million to perform a definition-phase study of the Atmospheric Composition instrument for the Geostationary Extended Observations program, called GeoXO.
An Atlas 5 N22 rocket lifted off from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 6:54 p.m. Eastern May 19. The Starliner spacecraft, formally designated Spacecraft 2 by Boeing, separated from the dual-engine Centaur upper stage 15 minutes after liftoff, performing a 40-second orbital insertion burn 16 minutes later to place the spacecraft into a stable orbit.
When Iceye co-founders Rafal Modrzewski and Pekka Laurila began looking for promising markets for synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data, they focused exclusively on the Arctic.
WASHINGTON — Boeing says it is considering redesigning the propellant valves on future CST-100 Starliner commercial crew spacecraft as a long-term solution to the corrosion problem those valves suffered last year.
WASHINGTON — Despite a widening loss in the first quarter, Virgin Orbit executives said they believe they have enough financial runway for their air launch business to gain altitude this year.