Tag: Planetary Science
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Japanese probe readies for another possible touch-and-go on asteroid
A camera on-board Hayabusa 2 captured this image of the target marker (the bright feature at bottom right) being released just above asteroid Ryugu on May 30. Credit: JAXA Approaching the one-year anniversary since its arrival at asteroid Ryugu, Japan’s Hayabusa 2 spacecraft has deployed a target marker near an artificial crater created by an…
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India plans July launch of Chandrayaan 2 moon mission
An astronaut on the International Space Station captured this photo of moonrise in 2017. Credit: NASA Indian engineers hope to launch the country’s first robotic lunar lander between July 9 and July 16 on India’s most powerful rocket, the head of the Indian space agency said this week. The robotic Chandrayaan 2 mission will launch…
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Hayabusa 2 locates artificial crater on asteroid
[CRA2] Crater formation where the Small Carry-on Impactor collided with Ryugu has been confirmed! These images compare the surface before and after the SCI collision. pic.twitter.com/BZPYlHhSjs — HAYABUSA2@JAXA (@haya2e_jaxa) April 25, 2019 New images from Japan’s Hayabusa 2 spacecraft show the location of a fresh crater carved from the jagged terrain of asteroid Ryugu by…
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InSight lander detects first likely ‘quake’ on Mars
This image of InSight’s seismometer was captured March 19. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Sensors delivered to Mars by NASA’s InSight lander have detected the first signals suggesting seismic activity on the red planet, a major discovery that extends the field of seismology to a new world beyond the Earth and the moon. Scientists announced the detection Tuesday,…
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Errant command doomed Israeli moon lander, officials vow to try again
A camera aboard the Israeli Beresheet lunar lander captured this picture of the moon from an altitude of 15 kilometers, or about 49,000 feet. Credit: SpaceIL A command uplinked by mission control to resolve an error in the guidance system on the Israeli Beresheet moon lander inadvertently triggered a chain reaction that led to the…
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Israeli probe crashes in attempt to become first privately-funded moon lander
This image was taken by Beresheet at an altitude of 13.7 miles (22 kilometers) above the moon and relayed to mission controllers through NASA’s Deep Space Network. Credit: SpaceIL An Israeli-built spacecraft seeking to become the first privately-developed probe to land on the moon crashed on descent Thursday, but the mission was widely lauded as…
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Live coverage: Israel’s Beresheet lander lost during descent to the moon
Live coverage of the final descent and landing of the privately-funded Israeli Beresheet spacecraft on the moon. Text updates will appear automatically below. SpaceIL’s live video webcast of Beresheet’s landing on the moon begins at 1845 GMT (2:45 p.m. EDT) Thursday.
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Privately-funded Israeli probe set for daring moon landing attempt
An Israeli-built spacecraft financed through donations from billionaire philanthropists is set to make history Thursday when it tries to become the first privately-funded probe to land on the moon. If successful, the landing will make Israel the fourth nation to land a spacecraft on the lunar surface, and the first non-superpower to achieve the…
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Japan’s Hayabusa 2 probe releases ‘bomb’ at asteroid
Artist’s illustration of Hayabusa 2’s impactor experiment. Credit: JAXA Japan’s Hayabusa 2 spacecraft dropped an explosive charge on asteroid Ryugu on Thursday night in an audacious attempt to carve a crater on the object, exposing pristine underground rocks to be retrieved by the probe for return to Earth. Six weeks after snagging a sample from…
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Israel’s Beresheet lander brakes into lunar orbit
The Beresheet spacecraft’s six-minute deceleration burn Thursday steered the probe into orbit around the moon. Credit: SpaceIL Six weeks after launching from Cape Canaveral, an Israeli-built probe funded through private donations arrived in orbit around the moon Thursday, setting the stage for the mission’s final descent to the lunar surface April 11. Engineers at the…