Tag: Mars
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Assessing the Martian atmosphere: MAVEN prepares for launch
With less than 18 days to go before the beginning of NASA’s next scheduled mission to Mars, engineers and vehicle processing personnel at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, are hard at work preparing MAVEN and its Atlas V rocket for launch on 18 November. MAVEN – A multi-year/corporation endeavor: The Mars Atmosphere and…
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NASA Con Ops Assess Baseline Features for SLS/Orion Mission to Mars
More clues into NASA’s long term goal of sending humans to Mars have been provided in the latest revision of the Space Launch System (SLS) Concept of Operations (Con Ops) presentation. The document confirms the agency is siding with a version of the Mars Design Reference Architecture 5.0, utilizing multiple SLS launches, including nuclear stages,…
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Dragon Roadmap: From domestic crew independence to humans on Mars
SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft is continuing to make solid progress during the early years of its incremental roadmap, a path that has a firm focus on sending humans to Mars. With successful Commercial Cargo missions already under its belt, Dragon is already targeting the role of transporting NASA crews to the International Space Station (ISS). Rise…
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NASA Authorization Act pushes for Moon and Mars priority
The House Science space subcommittee’s 2013 Authorization Act intends to refocus NASA’s exploration path towards prioritizing the goal of landing humans on both the Moon and Mars, according to draft document. Ahead of a hearing on Wednesday, the political direction also pours cold water on the realigned Exploration Mission -2 (EM-2) to explore a captured…
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With $2M in Kickstarter funds, asteroid-mining company’s public telescope could find alien planets
It ain’t Kepler, but an upgrade to Planetary Resources’ crowdfunded public telescope could hunt for alien planets. The Bellevue-based asteroid-mining company announced new Kickstarter stretch goals in its campaign to produce the world’s first crowdfunded, public use space telescope. After two weeks, funding sits about $140,000 shy of the original $1 million goal. With 19 days…
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A return to the Moon would send NASA back to square one – Bolden
NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden has strongly ruled out missions to land on the Moon as part of NASA’s exploration roadmap, claiming any future political re-direction to return humans to the lunar surface would send the Agency “back to square one”. Meanwhile, Northrop Grumman have completed their Lunar Lander Study on behalf of the Golden Spike…
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Planetary Resources founder: ‘Humans will migrate off Earth in the next 30 years’
Peter Diamandis, Chris Lewicki and Eric Anderson of Planetary Resources. Can you imagine packing your belongings and hopping on a spaceship to go live on another planet for the rest of your life? Eric Anderson, co-founder of Bellevue-based asteroid mining company Planetary Resources, certainly can. Anderson gave a great talk at this week’s Hacker News…
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ESA and Roscosmos sign ExoMars deal following NASA refocus
The European Space Agency (ESA) and the Russian federal space agency, Roscosmos, have announced their partnership on the ExoMars programme. The deal will result in two major Mars missions, launched via the Russian Proton-M rockets with Briz-M upper stages in 2016 and 2018. ExoMars: In the week NASA managers announced their Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) discovered…
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NASA’s MAVEN completes assembly ahead of mission to Mars
Lockheed Martin engineers have completed the assembly of NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft, ahead of shipping to the Kennedy Space Center in August. MAVEN is scheduled to launch towards Mars in November – where it will study the Martian upper atmosphere. NASA MAVEN: MAVEN is a robotic exploration mission to understand the…
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Curiosity will help humans reach Mars
As NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) continues to impress during its mission on the Red Planet – marked by another milestone via the use of its drill for the first time – NASA Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, John Grunsfeld believes Curiosity is providing vital information ahead of potential crewed missions to Mars.…