Tag: Asteroids
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Two asteroid missions get nod from NASA
Artist’s concepts of the Lucy and Psyche missions. Credit: SWRI and SSL/Peter Rubin NASA has selected two robotic missions to visit asteroids in the early 2020s from a field of proposed interplanetary probes, approving projects to explore a metallic relic from the early solar system and a half-dozen so-called Trojan objects left over from the…
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Asteroid fans get psyched up over NASA’s new Psyche and Lucy space missions
Artist’s conceptions show the Lucy probe visiting a rocky asteroid at left, and the Psyche probe visiting a metallic asteroid at right. (NASA Illustrations) Today is a great day for asteroid miners: NASA announced that it will provide full funding under its Discovery Program for two missions focusing on different types of asteroids. A mission…
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Hunt for water at Ceres goes underground
The small, bright crater Oxo (6 miles, 10 kilometers wide) on Ceres is seen in this perspective view. The elevation has been exaggerated by a factor of two. The view was made using enhanced-color images from NASA’s Dawn mission. Dawn’s visible and infrared mapping spectrometer (VIR) has found evidence of water ice at this crater.…
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NASA’s mission to snag asteroid faces questions amid Trump transition
In this artist’s conception, two astronauts make their way between their Orion capsule and a piece of an asteroid that’s been captured by a robotic spacecraft. (NASA via YouTube) House Republicans are voicing renewed doubts about NASA’s plan to have astronauts study a piece of an asteroid – a turn of events that was expected for…
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Planetary Resources strikes $28 million pact with Luxembourg for asteroid mining
An artist’s conception shows the Arkyd 6 space telescope in orbit. (Credit: Planetary Resources) Planetary Resources says it has finalized a $28 million (€25 million) agreement with Luxembourg to ramp up its asteroid mining campaign. The deal calls for the tiny European nation’s government and one of its top banking institutions, the Société Nationale de Crédit…
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NASA launches OSIRIS-REx probe on a mission to bring back bits of an asteroid
An Atlas 5 rocket lifts off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, sending NASA’s OSIRIS-REx probe into space. (Credit: Joel Kowsky / NASA> NASA launched its OSIRIS-REx probe today on America’s first mission to snag samples from a near-Earth asteroid and bring them back to Earth – and added a Star Trek twist. A United Launch Alliance Atlas…
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OSIRIS-REx reaches launch pad with money to spare
Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona. Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky The scientist in charge of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission hopes to apply more than $30 million in leftover funding toward reducing the risk of the probe’s touch-and-go maneuver to snag a piece of asteroid Bennu, then eventually hire more experts to analyze the…
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Photos: OSIRIS-REx prepped for encapsulation
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is about to be sealed inside the nose fairing of its Atlas 5 rocket booster for a seven-year voyage to asteroid Bennu and back to Earth on a mission to seek out clues to the origin of life and the chaotic early solar system. The solar-powered, 4,651-pound (2,110-kilogram) spacecraft is inside the…
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Video: Walk around NASA’s new asteroid sample probe
Take a walk around NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft less than three weeks before its Sept. 8 launch on top of an Atlas 5 rocket. Rich Kuhns, the mission’s program manager from Lockheed Martin, points out some of the major features on the probe. Lockheed Martin built the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft and will oversee mission operators after it…
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Space race heats up: Deep Space Industries plans to visit asteroid by 2020
An artist’s conception shows the Prospector 1 probe investigating an asteroid. (Credit DSI) One of the two big players in the asteroid mining market, Deep Space Industries, today unveiled its plan to land a 110-pound spacecraft on a near-Earth asteroid by 2020. The spacecraft, known as Prospector-1, would study the yet-to-be-selected asteroid to determine the value…