Items tagged with spacecraft
A new image captured by NASA’s Odyssey orbiter highlights a view of Mars that will help scientists gain new insights into the Martian atmosphere. The panoramic view was stitched together using 10 images, creating the view of the Martian landscapes below clouds and dust.
NASA engineers spent three months preparing...
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NASA caught a frickin’ laser beam from 10 million miles away and the space agency finds it groovy baby. No, the near-infrared laser beam was not from Dr. Evil’s deep space lair, but rather from NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment.
During its journey to the main asteroid belt between Mars and...
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Early last year, an obsolete part of a Chinese space rocket crashed into the lunar surface, leaving behind two visible craters. A team of researchers from the University of Arizona found definitive proof it caused the duo of craters and that it also had an undisclosed payload.
The event was unique in that most...
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SpaceX's launch of its uncrewed Starship garnered some astounding images during the second major flight test. The spacecraft achieved a height three times higher than its previous launch before it exploded over the Gulf of Mexico.
The company hoped Starship would have been able to successfully orbit Earth before...
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NASA's Lucy spacecraft surprises the space agency again with another unexpected find. Lucy will explore a record-breaking number of asteroids as it becomes the first mission to investigate the Jupiter Trojan asteroids.
Lucy is on a 12-year mission that will take the spacecraft right into the midst of a belt of...
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NASA’s Lucy probe cuts its teeth with its first up-close encounter with an asteroid named Dinkinesh before moving on to observe 10 other asteroids on its 12-year journey. Lucy had been tracking the asteroid since September 3, 2023.
According to NASA, the encounter was the first time that Lucy got a close look at an...
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The European Space Agency's Mars Express takes adventurers on a gorgeous ride across Mars's 'labyrinth of night'. The spacecraft has been exploring the atmosphere, surface, and subsurface of the Red Planet since 2004.
ESA shared footage captured by the Mars Express spacecraft as it flew over the eastern part of...
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NASA has sent a request for proposal for an estimated $1B US Deorbit Vehicle (USDV), a spacecraft aimed at deorbiting the International Space Station (ISS) and ultimately safely crashing back to Earth. The United States, Japan, Canada, and the European Space Agency (ESA) have all committed to operating the station...
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NASA is making slight adjustments to the flight path of its OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, which is scheduled to deliver a sample capsule from Bennu, an asteroid the size of the Empire State Building, back to Earth. The final correction maneuvers ensured the spacecraft lands in a predetermined area on the Defense Department's...
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Russia's attempt to land a spacecraft on the surface of the Moon for the first time in decades ended abruptly as the spacecraft crashed into the lunar surface. The country's last successful landing on the Moon was in 1976 with the Soviet Union's Luna 24 mission.
The Luna 25 lunar lander launched onboard a Soyuz 2.1...
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NASA's Europa Clipper received a massive upgrade in preparation for its launch scheduled for October 2024. The space agency added a high-gain antenna, one ET would have loved to have had to phone home with, that will enable the spacecraft to communicate with ground control back here on Earth from hundreds of millions...
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In a new paper, scientists do not rule out that horizontal protrusions that were photographed by NASA's Curiosity rover could have come from an alien spacecraft. The image in question was taken by Curiosity between sol 3786 and 3800 during its time in Mars' Gale Crater with its ChemCam.
Back in April of this year...
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NASA engineers and technicians are performing some of the final preparations for the Psyche spacecraft before its liftoff which is scheduled for October 5, 2023. Teams are working around the clock at Cape Canaveral, Florida, to make sure the spacecraft is ready for its journey to orbit a metal-rich asteroid, also...
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The European Space Agency (ESA) has launched its Euclid mission that will explore the mysteries of the dark universe. The space telescope is on its way to map out a large-scale structure of the Universe across space and time by observing billions of galaxies located as far away as 10 billion light-years.
Scientists...
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Researchers have discovered that Enceladus's ocean should contain phosphorus, one of the basic elements for terrestrial life. The scientists used geochemical modeling to predict just how much phosphorous could be present in the ocean of Saturn's moon Enceladus.
Observations by the Cassini spacecraft have already...
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The Mars Curiosity rover sent NASA a panoramic postcard capturing both the morning and afternoon views of the Red Planet. The postcard is a combination of two separate images taken of the Marker Band Valley just before the rover said goodbye to the area.
NASA has shared some incredible images from Mars that its...
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NASA believes there is a very good chance of finding signs of life once it lands back on the Moon, beginning with its Artemis III mission. Current research by the space agency suggests that the most likely candidate for the existence of microbes on the moon to be from humans.
As NASA prepares for its upcoming...
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After deciding to delay a mission to send a spacecraft to asteroid Psyche last summer, an independently appointed review board has given NASA and the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) the green light to carry on. NASA and JPL convened the board last summer following the mission team's request to delay the...
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A message in a bottle is headed to Jupiter's moon Europa later this year, and anyone can add their name to it. The message contains a poem written by US Poet Laureate Ada Limon titled, "In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa."
The "Message in a Bottle" campaign will include names received before midnight on...
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NASA's Voyager 2 is getting an energy boost that will help keep its science instruments running until 2026 and perhaps beyond. This is all made possible by a rather simple hack on NASA's part.
Widely regarded as two of the most successful space probes ever, Voyager 1 and 2 have been plugging along for the past 46...
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Japanese company ispace learned the hard way that landing a spacecraft on the surface of the moon is far from easy. The company's attempt to be the first private company to make a moon landing ended with a loss of communication with its Hakuto-R lander before crashing into the lunar surface.
With so many successful...
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As space tourism becomes more of a reality, one group of scientists is pondering the thought of "uncontrolled human conception" in space. The scientist's green paper suggests space sex could happen within the next decade and we need to start preparing for it now.
The group says tourist behavior will differ greatly...
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