Tag: Planetary Science

  • Juno right on target for July 4 rendezvous with Jupiter

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    Artist’s concept of the Juno spacecraft on approach to Jupiter. Credit: Lockheed Martin NASA’s Juno spacecraft, running on solar power more than 500 million miles from the sun, is on final approach for a Fourth of July arrival at Jupiter for a year-and-a-half campaign of exploration. Engineers this week are preparing the probe for a…

  • Japanese orbiter officially begins science mission at Venus

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    Artist’s concept of Japan’s Akatsuki spacecraft at Venus. Credit: JAXA Five months since a belated arrival at Venus, Japan’s Akatsuki spacecraft has officially started a modified scientific survey of the sweltering, shrouded planet’s atmosphere and climate. The probe’s science cameras are collecting regular images of Venus’s exotic clouds, and Japanese engineers are optimistic Akatsuki can…

  • Departure of Europe’s first Mars rover delayed to 2020

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    Artist’s concept of the ExoMars rover. Credit: ESA Europe’s ExoMars rover will not be ready for launch in 2018, officials said Monday, forcing a two-year delay for the ambitious mission to drill into the Martian surface and search for the remnants of past life. Delays in the development of the European-built rover and a Russian…

  • SpaceX announces plan to send mission to Mars in 2018

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    Artist’s concept of SpaceX’s Red Dragon spacecraft landing on Mars. Credit: SpaceX Elon Musk’s space transport company — chartered with a long-term goal of colonizing Mars — plans to send the first commercial mission to the red planet as soon as 2018 with assistance from NASA, SpaceX announced Wednesday. Measuring about 20 feet tall and…

  • Dawn mission expected to go into overtime at Ceres

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    The bright central spots near the center of Occator Crater are shown in enhanced color in this view from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft. Such views can be used to highlight subtle color differences on Ceres’ surface. This image combines high-resolution black-and-white imagery from February 2016 with lower-resolution color data collected by Dawn in September 2015. NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA/PSI/LPI…

  • Opportunity rover snaps photo of Martian dust devil

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    Credit: NASA / JPL / Cornell / Ken Kremer (kenkremer.com) / Marco Di Lorenzo NASA’s Opportunity Mars rover has captured a dust devil spinning across the barren floor of Endeavour Crater, an impact basin the robot has explored since 2011 in the mission’s long-lived second act. The color mosaic presented here, created by Dr. Ken Kremer and Marco…

  • InSight Mars lander escapes cancellation, aims for 2018 launch

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    The InSight lander in its cruise stage configuration prior to undergoing acoustic testing at Lockheed Martin. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Lockheed Martin The InSight Mars lander has won a reprieve from NASA’s top managers after persistent problems with one of the probe’s science instruments caused the mission to miss a narrow launch window planned for this month. The…

  • Fate of NASA’s InSight Mars mission to be decided soon

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    Updated March 7. The back shell of the InSight spacecraft is lowered onto the lander in a clean room at Lockheed Martin. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Lockheed Martin NASA is close to deciding whether to spend an extra $150 million to send the InSight lander to Mars in 2018 or cancel the mission after an instrument problem made…

  • Water ice abounds in Pluto’s frigid bedrock

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    This false-color image, derived from observations in infrared light by the Ralph/Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array (LEISA) instrument, shows where the spectral features of water ice are abundant on Pluto’s surface. It is based on two LEISA scans of Pluto obtained on July 14, 2015, from a range of about 67,000 miles (108,000 kilometers). The…

  • Jupiter-bound Juno spacecraft breaks solar power distance record

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    Technicians work on one of the Juno spacecraft’s three solar panels before launch. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/KSC NASA’s Juno spacecraft bound for a rendezvous with Jupiter in July has set a record as the most distant solar-powered space probe ever flown. Juno broke the record previously held by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft Jan. 13 as…