Nasa’s rover, the most advanced astrobiology laboratory ever sent to another world, landed safely on the floor of a vast crater on Thursday, the first stop on its search for life on the red planet
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Mars rover landing: Nasa’s Perseverance safely touches down in search of life
Radio signals confirmed that the six-wheeled rover had survived its perilous descent and arrived within its target zone
Nasa’s science rover Perseverance, the most advanced astrobiology laboratory ever sent to another world, streaked through the Martian atmosphere on Thursday and landed safely on the floor of a vast crater, its first stop on a search for traces of ancient microbial life on the Red Planet.
Mission managers at Nasa’s jet propulsion laboratory near Los Angeles burst into applause and cheers as radio signals confirmed that the six-wheeled rover had survived its perilous descent and arrived within its target zone inside Jezero crater, site of a long-vanished Martian lake bed.
Continue reading...Nasa Perseverance rover to land on Mars in search of life
Spacecraft will descend on red planet carrying helicopter and instruments to look for biosignatures
A rover and a tiny helicopter are preparing to land on Mars, aiming to offer an opportunity to answer an enduring question: has life ever emerged on another planet?
Nasa’s ninth mission to descend on the cold, dry, red planet will be steered by a $2.7bn (£2.1bn), car-sized, six-wheeled rover christened Perseverance, which is expected to touch down on Thursday following a seven-month journey.
Continue reading...Nasa’s Boeing deep space rocket set for ‘once-in-a-generation’ test
Test is step before first unmanned launch later this year, in push to land humans on the moon again by 2024
Nasa’s Boeing-built deep space exploration rocket, Space Launch System (SLS), is set to fire its behemoth core stage for the first time on Saturday, a crucial test for a years-delayed US government project facing mounting pressure from emerging private sector technology.
The SLS hot fire test, expected to begin at 5pm CST Saturday at Nasa’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, will cap a nearly year-long “Green Run” test campaign to validate the rocket’s design.
Continue reading...2020 was hottest year on record by narrow margin, Nasa says
Due to different methods, US Noaa judged year as fractionally cooler than 2016 while UK Met Office put 2020 in close second place
Last year was by a narrow margin the hottest ever on record, according to Nasa, with the climate crisis stamping its mark on 2020 through soaring temperatures, enormous hurricanes and unprecedented wildfires.
The average global land and ocean temperature in 2020 was the highest ever measured, Nasa announced on Thursday, edging out the previous record set in 2016 by less than a tenth of a degree.
Continue reading...Jeff Bezos: Blue Origin space company will take first woman to the moon
- Amazon owner seeks Nasa lunar lander contract
- Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Dynetics also in competition
Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin will take the first woman to the moon, the billionaire said as Nasa nears a decision over who will supply its first privately built lunar landers, meant to be capable of sending astronauts to the moon by 2024.
Related: Japan’s Hayabusa2 capsule returns to Earth carrying asteroid samples
Continue reading...SpaceX Nasa launch: astronauts head to International Space Station onboard Dragon capsule
Mike Hopkins, Shannon Walker, Victor Glover and Japan’s Soichi Noguchi successfully lifted off for the 27-hour flight on Sunday
SpaceX has launched four astronauts to the International Space Station on the first full-fledged taxi flight for Nasa by a private company.
The Falcon rocket thundered into the night from Kennedy Space Center in Florida with three Americans and one Japanese onboard, the second crew to be launched by SpaceX. The Dragon capsule on top – named Resilience by its crew in light of this year’s many challenges, most notably Covid-19 – is due to reach the space station after 27-and-a-half hours and remain there until spring.
Continue reading...SpaceX delays Crew Dragon launch due to poor weather
Forecasts of gusty, onshore winds over Florida force reschedule to Sunday of first full mission carrying four astronauts
Nasa and SpaceX have announced a 24-hour weather delay of their planned launch of four astronauts into orbit for America’s first fully fledged human mission using a privately owned spacecraft.
The liftoff time slipped from Saturday to Sunday evening due to forecasts of gusty, onshore winds over Florida – remnants of storm Eta – that would have jeopardised a return landing for the Falcon 9 rocket’s reusable booster stage, Nasa officials said.
Continue reading...Nasa poised to return to crewed spaceflight with SpaceX capsule launch
Public-private partnership with Elon Musk’s company to send four astronauts to international space station on Saturday
In a rocket ship perfectly named for the year of a global pandemic, three American astronauts and one from Japan are scheduled to blast off from Florida on Saturday evening as Nasa finally returns to the business of routine crewed spaceflight.
The 7.49pm launch of the SpaceX capsule Resilience from the Kennedy Space Center, a mission officially designated as Crew 1, will be the first time since the final flights of the space shuttle fleet in 2011 that the US space agency has its own operational rotating program of sending humans to the international space station.
Continue reading...Treasure trove of Nasa photos including first selfie in space up for auction
Sale by Christie’s in London of 2,400 vintage images ranges from the dawn of space age to the last men on the moon
Neil Armstrong’s giant leap for mankind is on sale to the highest bidder after a private collector released a treasure trove of Nasa images from spaceflight’s golden era for auction, including the only photograph taken of the first human walking on the moon.
Related: Apollo 11: the fight for the first footprint on the moon
Continue reading...Water exists on the moon, scientists confirm
Proof of significant amounts of H2O has implications for future lunar missions
Scientists have gathered some of the most compelling evidence yet for the existence of water on the moon – and it may be relatively accessible. The discovery has implications for future missions to the moon and deeper space exploration.
With no significant atmosphere insulating it from the sun’s rays, it had been assumed that the moon’s surface was dry – until the 1990s, when orbiting spacecraft found indications of ice in large and inaccessible craters near the moon’s poles.
Continue reading...Overstuffed Nasa spacecraft Osiris-Rex losing particles after bingeing on Bennu
After an asteroid encounter, scientists scrambled to minimize the loss of space rocks as the craft belched rubble
A Nasa spacecraft is stuffed with so much asteroid rubble from this week’s grab that it’s jammed open and precious particles are drifting away in space, scientists said on Friday.
Related: Nasa Osiris-Rex spacecraft lands on asteroid Bennu in mission to collect dust
Continue reading...Nasa Osiris-Rex spacecraft lands on asteroid Bennu in mission to collect dust
Spacecraft ‘kissed the surface’ in brief landing on asteroid 200m miles away from Earth in US-first mission
A Nasa spacecraft has successfully landed on an asteroid, dodging boulders the size of buildings, in order to collect a handful of cosmic rubble for analysis back on Earth.
The space agency team behind the Osiris-Rex project said preliminary data showed the sample collection went as planned and that the spacecraft had lifted off the surface of asteroid Bennu.
Continue reading...Talking on the moon: Nasa and Nokia to install 4G on lunar surface
Move is part of US space agency’s plan to establish a long-term human presence on the moon by 2030
With competition among Earth’s telecoms providers as fierce as ever, equipment maker Nokia has announced its expansion into a new market, winning a deal to install the first cellular network on the moon.
The Finnish equipment manufacturer said it was selected by Nasa to deploy an “ultra-compact, low-power, space-hardened” wireless 4G network on the lunar surface, as part of the US space agency’s plan to establish a long-term human presence on the moon by 2030.
Continue reading...Nasa is looking for private companies to help mine the moon
The agency announced it is buying lunar soil from a commercial provider as part of a technology development program
Nasa has announced it is looking for private companies to go to the moon and collect dust and rocks from the surface and bring them back to Earth.
The American space agency would then buy the moon samples in amounts between 50 to 500 grams for between $15,000 to $25,000.
Continue reading...Nasa to change ‘harmful’ and insensitive’ planet and galaxy nicknames
Space agency says ‘certain cosmic nicknames are insensitive’ and vows to drop any reference to them
Nasa has signaled it is joining the social justice movement by changing unofficial and potentially contentious names used by the scientific community for distant cosmic objects and systems such as planets, galaxies and nebulae.
In a statement last week, the space agency said that as the “community works to identify and address systemic discrimination and inequality in all aspects of the field, it has become clear that certain cosmic nicknames are not only insensitive, but can be actively harmful”.
Continue reading...Nasa astronauts aboard SpaceX capsule make first splashdown in 45 years
Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley land off Florida after two-month voyage that was Nasa’s first crewed mission from home in nine years
US astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley, who flew to the International Space Station in SpaceX’s new Crew Dragon, splashed down in the capsule in the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday after a two-month voyage that was Nasa’s first crewed mission from home soil in nine years.
Behnken and Hurley left the station on Saturday and returned home to land in the waves off Florida’s Pensacola coast on schedule at 2.48pm ET following a 21-hour overnight journey aboard Crew Dragon “Endeavor.”
Continue reading...Seeking life on Mars: Nasa prepares to launch its latest rover
Perseverance mission aims to land on crater to search for possible microbial Martians
Nasa’s most sophisticated rover yet is due to blast off for Mars on a mission to answer one of the most profound questions: did life ever emerge on another planet?
Mission controllers have set their sights on the 28-mile-wide (45km) Jezero crater north of the planet’s equator. The landing site is one of the most promising spots for any microbial Martians to have been preserved in rock formed when the crater held a lake nine times larger than Loch Ness.
Continue reading...Drain brain: Nasa offers prize money for best lunar loo design
Agency hopes to attract novel solutions for its Artemis mission to the moon in 2024
“It certainly isn’t the prime focus of the mission,” said Nasa’s Mike Interbartolo. “We’re not going back to the moon so we can say we pooped on the moon, but we don’t want an Apollo situation either.”
Interbartolo, is project manager for the Lunar Loo Challenge, a Nasa competition launched on Thursday that hopes to attract new and innovative solutions to the problem of capturing and containing human waste in space.
Continue reading...SpaceX Dragon crew capsule docks at International Space Station
- A milestone for two Nasa astronauts in historic mission
- First such rendezvous by US spacecraft since 2011
A mere 19 hours after blasting off from Florida, and with a short break for some Black Sabbath music in between, two Nasa astronauts docked the SpaceX Dragon crew capsule to the International Space Station (ISS) on Sunday in another milestone moment for their historic mission.
Related: Trump wants America looking at the stars as he drags it through the gutter
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