Tag: Planetary Science
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ESA science missions back in action after coronavirus-related shutdown
Artist’s concept of the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter. Credit: ESA/ATG medialab Four of the European Space Agency’s robotic missions, including the agency’s two Mars orbiters, are resuming science operations after a stand-down triggered by the positive diagnosis of an employee at ESA’s control center in Germany with the coronavirus. ESA said Thursday that the four…
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Mars 2020 rover arrives at Kennedy Space Center for July launch
The shipping container with the Mars 2020 rover was unloaded from a U.S. military cargo plane Wednesday after landing at the Shuttle Landing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: NASA/Cory Huston Two U.S. Air Force cargo planes delivered the Mars 2020 rover, cruise stage, descent module and the Mars Helicopter to the…
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NASA to assess proposals for probes to Venus, moons of Jupiter and Neptune
Artist’s concept of the solar system. Credit: NASA NASA announced Thursday it will fund four concept studies for potential robotic missions to Venus, Jupiter’s moon Io and Neptune’s moon Triton ahead of a decision next year to approve up to two of the projects for launch in the mid-to-late 2020s. The space agency chose the…
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Discoveries at solar system’s distant frontier shed light on how planets form
The uniform color and composition of Arrokoth’s surface shows the Kuiper Belt object formed from a small, uniform, cloud of material in the solar nebula, rather than a mishmash of matter from more separated parts of the nebula. The former supports the idea that Arrokoth formed in a local collapse of a cloud in the…
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NASA invites public to vote on name for Mars 2020 rover
The Mars 2020 rover is seen during a drive test in December at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA has announced the nine finalists for the name of the space agency’s next Mars rover — scheduled for launch in July — and invited the public to vote on the candidates before…
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ESA’s Huygens probe landed on Saturn’s moon Titan 15 years ago
This mosaic of three frames taken by Huygens during its descent to Titan provides unprecedented detail of a ridge area, including a network of river channels. Credit: ESA/NASA/JPL/University of Arizona Fifteen years after accomplishing the first-ever landing on Saturn’s moon Titan, lessons learned from the European Space Agency’s Huygens spacecraft continue aiding designers of future…
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China publishes Chang’e 4 data one year after first landing on far side of the moon
The Yutu 2 rover is pictured on the far side of the moon soon after landing in January 2019. This image was taken by a camera on the Chang’e 4 mission’s stationary landing platform. Credit: CNSA/CLEP Chinese officials marked the one-year anniversary of the Chang’e 4 mission’s historic first soft landing on the far side…
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NASA’s next Mars rover will soon ship to Cape Canaveral launch site
The Mars 2020 rover inside the Spacecraft Assembly Facility high bay Dec. 27 at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Credit: Alex Polimeni / Spaceflight Now Fresh off its first terrestrial test drive, NASA’s Mars 2020 rover was displayed to media last week at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California before it’s packed up…
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Amateur sleuth helps locate crash site of India’s Vikram moon lander
This before and after image ratio highlights changes to the surface; the impact point is near center of the image and stands out due the dark rays and bright outer halo. Note the dark streak and debris about 100 meters to the south-southeast of the impact point. Diagonal straight lines are uncorrected background artifacts. Credits:…
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Chinese Mars rover completes landing trial ahead of 2020 launch
A test model of China’s first Mars rover, set for launch in mid-2020, performs a landing test Nov. 14 inside a specially-built rig in northern China’s Hebei province. Credit: Xinhua China has performed a hover and hazard avoidance test on a model the country’s first Mars rover, while engineers ready the real spacecraft for launch…