NASA’s latest Mars rover — Perseverance — is its most advanced to date, carrying with it a plethora of technology that includes a suite of 23 cameras. We’ve already been treated to incredible footage from several of the cameras, captured as the rover approached the surface of the red planet on February 18, 2021. Within […]
Did you know you can track the progress of NASA’s Perseverance rover in real time as it travels tens of millions of miles toward Mars? This weekend NASA pointed space fans to its interactive Eyes on the Solar System desktop app that lets you track the current location of the Mars 2020 rover, among a […]
This summer, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will attempt to touch down onto the surface of asteroid Bennu and collect a sample to be brought back to Earth for the first time. But it’s no easy task to maneuver a spacecraft so close to an asteroid, getting it close enough to grab a sample without impacting too […]
NASA is making the final preparations for its Mars 2020 mission, set for launch in July. The space agency recently reported the completion of important testing at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, close to where the rocket and spacecraft carrying the recently named Perseverance rover will lift off in three months’ time. The testing […]
SpaceX won’t only be delivering supplies and ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA, it will also be delivering cargo to the planned Lunar Gateway space station in orbit around the moon. NASA has announced SpaceX as its first commercial partner for the Gateway project, which is part of the Artemis program which […]
When it heads to the red planet later this year, NASA’s Perseverance rover won’t just be carrying scientific instruments — it will also carry the names of millions of space fans. Last year, NASA launched its “Send Your Name to Mars” campaign in which members of the public were invited to submit their names to […]
NASA has announced two sets of instruments that will be carried aboard its planned Lunar Gateway space station. NASA’s Gateway project aims to have astronauts orbiting the moon by 2025, with the construction of the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway acting as a base of operations for lunar missions and eventually, missions to other parts of the […]
[embedded content] NASA’s ambitious plan to put humans back on the moon by 2024 means there’s plenty of prep work ahead for the space agency. An important part of that work is ensuring that the Orion spacecraft, which is set to transport the astronauts to Earth’s nearest neighbor, can handle every conceivable scenario during its […]
[embedded content] The Mars 2020 rover is preparing for its big mission by doing some “bicep curls” in a new video released by NASA. The rover will head to Mars in July 2020 and is scheduled to land on the Red Planet’s Jezero Crater in February 2021. It’s a big mission to prepare for: the […]
NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, affectionately called TESS, discovered three new worlds during its latest exploration. The exoplanets are the smallest, nearest known to date and orbit a star that’s just 73 light-years away, which is pretty much just around the corner in cosmic terms, NASA and MIT announced Monday. The star furthermost away also […]
RoboSimian can walk on four legs, crawl, move like an inchworm and slide on its belly. In this photo, it stands on the Devil’s Golf Course in Death Valley, California, for field testing with engineer Brendan Chamberlain-Simon. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech When it comes to exploring far off planets, robots need to be able to tackle all […]
[embedded content] When Neil Armstrong became the first human in history to set foot on the moon in July 1969, team members back at Mission Control allowed themselves a brief pat on the back in a tense operation that still had to bring the astronauts safely back home. It may seem unfathomable to some, but […]
[embedded content] NASA is sending a drone to Saturn’s largest moon in a bid to learn more about the building blocks of life, and possibly provide answers on how it all kicked off on Earth. The Dragonfly mission to Titan will launch in 2026, with the spacecraft and its drone reaching the icy moon eight […]
[embedded content] NASA’s Mars Helicopter passed its latest barrage of tests and is almost ready for its trip to the Red Planet, traveling alongside the Mars 2020 rover when the mission launches next year. This will be the first heavier-than-air vehicle ever to be flown on another planet, so there are a lot of engineering […]
Team SEArch+/Apis Cor It’s expensive to ship things through space, so when the first space colonists reach the moon or Mars, they will want to carry as little cargo as possible. That poses a challenge: If they need to limit the amount of resources they bring, what will colonists use to build their shelters? One […]