Tag: Planetary Science
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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…
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Japanese sample return craft departs asteroid, heads for Earth
The Hayabusa 2 spacecraft’s navigation camera captured this image of asteroid Ryugu on Wednesday, Nov. 13. Credit: JAXA Closing out a year-and-a-half of exploration, surveys and sampling operations at asteroid Ryugu, Japan’s Hayabusa 2 spacecraft fired thrusters in a departure maneuver Wednesday and headed for Earth with specimens snatched from the asteroid’s dark and rocky…
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Ground teams studying setback with InSight’s subsurface heat probe
EDITOR’S NOTE: Updated at 8 p.m. EDT (0000 GMT) with comments from Bruce Banerdt, Insight’s principal investigator, about Level 1 requirements. Mars continues to surprise us. While digging this weekend the mole backed about halfway out of the ground. Preliminary assessment points to unexpected soil properties as the main reason. Team looking at next steps. #SaveTheMole…
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LRO’s view of Chandrayaan 2 landing site obscured by shadows
NASA’s Galileo spacecraft captured this view of the moon in 1992 on its mission to Jupiter. Credit: NASA An overflight last week of the Chandrayaan 2 landing site on the moon by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has turned up no clear sign of the lost Indian lander. Another flyover with better lighting conditions is scheduled…
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Launch of South Korean lunar orbiter delayed to 2022
The moon as seen from the International Space Station. Credit: NASA The launch of South Korea’s first moon orbiter has been delayed from December 2020 until July 2022 after the mission encountered technical issues during development, officials recently announced. The design of the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, or KPLO, has grown beyond its original launch…
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NASA’s Juno spacecraft sees moon’s otherworldly shadow on Jupiter
The shadow of Jupiter’s moon Io is cast on the cloud tops of the giant planet in this view taken Sept. 12 by a camera on-board NASA’s Juno spacecraft. Kevin Gill, a software engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, created this mosaic from imagery taken by the JunoCam instrument. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill Fresh images…
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Hayabusa 2 completes practice run for deployment of last asteroid lander
One of two target markers released by Japan’s Hayabusa 2 spacecraft is seen in this overlay image with frames showing the target marker’s location at 4-second intervals. Credit: JAXA Japan’s Hayabusa 2 spacecraft deployed two target markers Monday above asteroid Ryugu in a rehearsal for the release of the mission’s final landing robot next month.…