Tag: Planetary Science
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NASA’s Twin Venus Missions Regain Momentum, DAVINCI Moves Up a Year
The developments were announced last week at a meeting of the Venus Exploration Analysis Group, a gathering of scientists focused on the planet. None of the current progress was guaranteed. Budget cuts imperiled one US mission to Venus and delayed the other, then forced NASA to pull out of a partnership with Europe to supply…
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UAE Reveals Asteroid Belt Lander Ahead of 2028 Launch to Mysterious Red Asteroid
The Emirates Mission to the Asteroid Belt follows the UAE Space Agency’s Hope Mars orbiter, which has studied the Red Planet since 2021. The autonomous lander will ride attached to the main spacecraft, MBR Explorer, named after Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, ruler of Dubai and the UAE’s prime minister. The lander was designed, built…
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Hubble and Webb Team Up to Probe Solar System’s Faintest Icy Relics
Trans-Neptunian Objects are small, faint, icy bodies orbiting the Sun beyond Neptune, most of them more than 100 million times dimmer than objects visible to the unaided eye. These objects offer the best view into an early stage of planet-building, when a disk of dust and pebbles around the Sun coalesced into city-sized planetesimals but…
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China Advances Tianwen-3 Mars Sample-Return Mission Toward 2028 Launch
China has moved hardware for its Tianwen-3 Mars sample-return mission into prototype development, maintaining plans for two Long March 5 launches in late 2028 and the return of approximately 500 grams of Martian material to Earth around 2031. If successful, the mission would complete the first direct return of samples from Mars and could give…
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Saturn’s South Polar Decagon: What Could Have Created Hubble’s Newly Identified Atmospheric Wave?
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has revealed a giant, evolving ten-sided atmospheric wave around Saturn’s south pole—the first large, regular-sided jet pattern observed in the planet’s southern hemisphere. Known as a decagon, the feature appears in observations dating back to 2023 and has become increasingly distinct, offering scientists a rare opportunity to track the development of…
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Tianwen-3 to Dig Up Martian Soil and Bring It Back to Earth, a First for Humanity
As a key step in China’s planetary exploration program, the Tianwen-3 Mars sample return mission is expected to become the first successful Mars sample return mission in human history. At the 2026 Deep Space Exploration (Tiandu) International Conference held on September 3, Academician Hou Zengqian of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the chief scientist of…
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NASA Backs 18 Visionary Space Concepts, Including a Swarm of 10,000 Femtosatellites for Saturn Exploration
NASA has selected 18 early-stage technology concepts for funding under its 2026 NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program, supporting a diverse portfolio of futuristic ideas ranging from lunar cave exploration and Venus-hardened spacecraft to a proposed fleet of 10,000 miniature satellites designed to probe Saturn’s rings. The agency announced on July 29 that the 18…
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NASA concludes MAVEN mission at Mars, uses data to discover new atmospheric phenomenon
Following a six-month battle to regain communication with its Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft around Mars, NASA announced the conclusion of the MAVEN mission on June 3rd. The mission, which launched to the red planet in 2013, studied the Martian atmosphere and its evolution for 11 years — over a decade longer than…
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NASA Declares MAVEN Mars Mission Ended After Spacecraft Falls Silent
NASA has officially declared the end of its MAVEN mission after the spacecraft orbiting Mars became unresponsive and could not be recovered following a communications loss that began in December. The agency confirmed the mission’s conclusion on Wednesday, bringing to a close more than a decade of scientific observations of the Red Planet. Contact Lost…
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The Moon is already on Google Maps—did Artemis II really tell us anything new?
The data pipeline from NASA’s Artemis II mission opened to full blast a few hours after looping behind the far side of the Moon on Monday night, when the Orion spacecraft established a laser communications link with a receiving station back on Earth. A cache of high-resolution images began streaming down through this connection. NASA…