Tag: Planetary Science

  • NASA to have limited role in SpaceX’s planned Mars campaign

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    Artist’s concept of a Dragon spacecraft at Mars. Credit: SpaceX Expertise, input and advice from seasoned NASA engineers will improve SpaceX’s chances of nailing the first commercial landing on Mars as soon as late 2018, a senior space agency official said Wednesday, but Elon Musk’s space transport company will likely seek more independence from U.S.…

  • NASA to have limited role in SpaceX’s planned Mars campaign

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    Artist’s concept of a Dragon spacecraft at Mars. Credit: SpaceX Expertise, input and advice from seasoned NASA engineers will improve SpaceX’s chances of nailing the first commercial landing on Mars as soon as late 2018, a senior space agency official said Wednesday, but Elon Musk’s space transport company will likely seek more independence from U.S.…

  • OSIRIS-REx reaches launch pad with money to spare

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    Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona. Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky The scientist in charge of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission hopes to apply more than $30 million in leftover funding toward reducing the risk of the probe’s touch-and-go maneuver to snag a piece of asteroid Bennu, then eventually hire more experts to analyze the…

  • Lost Philae lander found on comet

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    Rosetta’s lander Philae has been identified in OSIRIS narrow-angle camera images taken on Sept. 2, 2016 from a distance of 1.7 miles (2.7 kilometers). The image scale is about 2 inches (5 centimeters) per pixel. Philae’s 3-foot-wide (1-meter) body and two of its three legs can be seen extended from the body. The images also…

  • Juno beams back dramatic new pictures of Jupiter

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    STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION The JunoCam instrument obtained this view on Aug. 27, about two hours before closest approach, when the spacecraft was 120,000 miles (195,000 kilometers) away from the giant planet (i.e., for Jupiter’s center). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS NASA’s Juno spacecraft, making its first scientific run over Jupiter’s poles Aug. 27, captured…

  • Juno gets its closest look at Jupiter

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    Updated with details from NASA press release. Jupiter’s north polar region is coming into view as NASA’s Juno spacecraft approaches the giant planet. This view of Jupiter was taken on August 27, when Juno was 437,000 miles (703,000 kilometers) away.Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS Nearly two months after NASA’s Juno spacecraft slipped into orbit around Jupiter, the solar-powered…

  • China’s Yutu rover dies on the moon

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    A camera aboard the Chang’e 3 lander captured this view of the Yutu rover in December 2013. Credit: Chinese Academy of Sciences/NAOC/Science and Application Center for Moon and Deepspace Exploration A Chinese rover sent to the moon in 2013 has stopped operating, officials announced Wednesday, ending a groundbreaking 31-month mission that made discoveries in lunar…

  • NASA spells out support for SpaceX’s Red Dragon Mars mission

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    Artist’s concept of SpaceX’s Red Dragon spacecraft entering the Martian atmosphere. Credit: SpaceX If SpaceX is able to dispatch a robotic Dragon capsule to land on the red planet in 2018 on time and successfully, engineers stand to get a lesson on what it will take to eventually send humans there, capturing key data on…

  • ExoMars orbiter fine-tunes path toward red planet

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    Artist’s concept of the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter. Credit: Thales Alenia Space. A European spacecraft cruising toward Mars fired its main engine Thursday, tweaking its trajectory and helping set up for carefully-choreographed simultaneous maneuvers Oct. 19 to place part of the tandem mission into orbit around the red planet and deposit a stationary battery-powered lander…

  • NASA developing plans for commercially-built Mars orbiter

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    An artist’s illustration of one potential design for NASA’s new Mars orbiter, which could launch as soon as 2022. Credit: NASA NASA is advancing a plan to send a robotic orbiter to Mars in the early 2020s, developing designs with five U.S. satellite makers for a mission to extend high-resolution mapping capabilities, telecommunications relay functions,…