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NASA to make final attempt to contact Mars Opportunity Rover![]() Washington (AFP) Feb 13, 2019 US space agency NASA will make one final attempt to contact its Opportunity Rover on Mars late Tuesday, eight months after it last made contact. The agency also said it would hold a briefing Wednesday, during which it will likely officially declare the end of the mission. Opportunity landed on Mars in 2004 and covered 28 miles (45 kilometers) on the planet, securing its place in history after lasting well beyond its expected 90-day mission. But a giant dust storm last year blocked sunlight ... read more |
New study suggests possibility of recent underground volcanism on MarsWashington DC (SPX) Feb 13, 2019 A study published last year in the journal Science suggested liquid water is present beneath the south polar ice cap of Mars. Now, a new study in the AGU journal Geophysical Research Letters argues ... more
NASA's MAVEN spacecraft shrinking its Mars orbit to prepare for Mars 2020 RoverGreenbelt MD (SPX) Feb 12, 2019 NASA's 4-year-old atmosphere-sniffing Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission is embarking on a new campaign to tighten its orbit around Mars. The operation will reduce the highest po ... more
Developing a flight strategy to land heavier vehicles on MarsUrbana IL (SPX) Feb 12, 2019 The heaviest vehicle to successfully land on Mars is the Curiosity Rover at 1 metric ton, about 2,200 pounds. Sending more ambitious robotic missions to the surface of Mars, and eventually humans, w ... more
Curiosity Mars Rover Departs Vera Rubin RidgePasadena CA (JPL) Feb 11, 2019 After exploring Mars' Vera Rubin Ridge for more than a year, NASA's Curiosity rover (https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl) recently moved on. But a new 360-video lets the public visit Curiosity's final dri ... more |
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What Can Curiosity Tell Us About How a Martian Mountain FormedWashington DC (SPX) Feb 01, 2019 The density of rock layers on the terrain that climbs from the base of Mars' Gale Crater to Mount Sharp is less dense than expected, according to the latest report on the Red Planet's geology from a ... more
Innovative GEDI Instrument Now Gathering Forest DataGreenbelt MD (SPX) Feb 04, 2019 NASA instrument scientist Bryan Blair had just finished writing the flight software for the agency's Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter, or MOLA, when he was invited in 1991 to fly a lidar instrument aboa ... more
Research Uses Curiosity Rover to Measure Gravity on MarsCollege Park MD (SPX) Feb 01, 2019 Apollo 17 astronauts drove a moon buggy across the lunar surface in 1972, measuring subtle changes in gravitational pull with an instrument called a gravimeter. Although there are no astronauts on M ... more
Curiosity Says Farewell to Mars' Vera Rubin RidgePasadena CA (JPL) Jan 29, 2019 NASA's Curiosity rover has taken its last selfie on Vera Rubin Ridge and descended toward a clay region of Mount Sharp. The twisting ridge on Mars has been the rover's home for more than a yea ... more
Mars Rover Curiosity Makes Gravity-Measuring TraverseTempe AZ (SPX) Jan 31, 2019 A clever use of non-science engineering data from NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has let a team of researchers, including an Arizona State University graduate student, measure the density of rock layer ... more |
![]() NASA's Opportunity Rover Logs 15 Years on Mars
Prolonged spaceflight could weaken astronauts' immune systemsTucson AZ (SPX) Jan 24, 2019 NASA hopes to send humans to Mars by 2030 on a round-trip mission that could take up to three years - far longer than any human has ever traveled in space. Such long-term spaceflights could adversel ... more |
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ExoMars software passes ESA Mars Yard driving testNoordwijk, Netherlands (SPX) Jan 18, 2019 Navigation software destined for the ExoMars 2020 mission to the Red Planet has passed a rover-based driving test at ESA's 'Mars Yard'. ESA's ExoMars rover will drive to multiple locations and ... more
Dust storm activity appears to pick up south of OpportunityPasadena CA (JPL) Jan 18, 2019 Dust storm activity appears to have picked up again, with a regional storm tracking south about 124 miles (200 kilometers) to the west of Opportunity. The storm is expected to increase in opac ... more
Compete in a lunar economyParis (ESA) Jan 21, 2019 Sign up to the Metalysis-ESA Grand Challenge worth euro 500 000 rewarding innovation that helps us to explore space. As ESA and other agencies prepare to send humans back to the Moon - this t ... more
Team selected by Canadian Space Agency to study Mars mineralsLondon, Canada (SPX) Jan 17, 2019 In the coming years, new rovers will explore Mars with better scientific instruments, as capable as those that exist in labs here on Earth today. Roberta Flemming from Western University's Departmen ... more
UK tests self driving robots for MarsLondon, UK (SPX) Jan 03, 2019 As far as we know, Mars is the only planet populated entirely by robots! Due to the time taken for commands to travel to Mars (eight minutes each way), hand guided robots are limited to travelling o ... more |
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China's lander and rover power down for lunar night Beijing (Sputnik) Feb 13, 2019
Last week, NASA released unique satellite reconnaissance photos of the landing site of the Chinese lunar mission, which made history last month by achieving humanity's first-ever successful soft landing on the far side of the Moon.
China's Chang'e-4 spacecraft and its Yutu-2 lunar rover have entered sleep mode to wait out the cold lunar night, during which temperatures can plunge to as low ... more |
China improves Long March-6 rocket for growing commercial launches Beijing (XNA) Feb 12, 2019
China announced Monday that it is developing the modified version of the Long March-6 rocket to add four solid boosters to increase its carrying capacity.
The improved medium-left carrier rocket will be sent into space by 2020, according to the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology under the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, which designed the rocket.
The Long ... more |
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Insulating crust kept cryomagma liquid for millions of years on nearby dwarf planet Austin TX (SPX) Feb 13, 2019
A recent NASA mission to the dwarf planet Ceres found brilliant, white spots of salts on its surface. New research led by The University of Texas at Austin in partnership with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) delved into the factors that influenced the volcanic activity that formed the distinctive spots and that could play a key role in mixing the ingredients for life on other worlds.
... more |
New Horizons' evocative farewell glance at Ultima Thule Washington DC (SPX) Feb 11, 2019
An evocative new image sequence from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft offers a departing view of the Kuiper Belt object (KBO) nicknamed Ultima Thule - the target of its New Year's 2019 flyby and the most distant world ever explored.
These aren't the last Ultima Thule images New Horizons will send back to Earth - in fact, many more are to come - but they are the final views New Horizons captu ... more |
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Scientist sheds light on Titan's mysterious nitrogen atmosphere San Antonio TX (SPX) Jan 24, 2019
A new Southwest Research Institute study tackles one of the greatest mysteries about Titan, one of Saturn's moons: the origin of its thick, nitrogen-rich atmosphere. The study posits that one key to Titan's mysterious atmosphere is the "cooking" of organic material in the moon's interior.
"Titan is a very interesting moon because it has this very thick atmosphere, which makes it unique amo ... more |
In Solar System's Symphony, Earth's Magnetic Field Drops the Beat Greenbelt MD (SPX) Feb 13, 2019
Space isn't silent. In fact, an entire orchestra of instruments fills our near-Earth environment with eerie sounds. Scientists have long known about space phenomena involving electromagnetic waves travelling around Earth that resonate like string instruments and whistle like wind instruments. Now, new research published in Nature Communications has added a percussive member to the cosmic ensembl ... more |
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The future of human spaceflight in America Columbus OH (SPX) Feb 11, 2019
"This year, American astronauts will go back to space in American rockets."
This one sentence from the 2019 State of the Union address may have escaped your notice. It ended a paragraph in which the president paid tribute to astronaut Buzz Aldrin of the Apollo 11 mission to mark the the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing. From that point, the speech transitioned to increasing the s ... more |
Scientists discover oldest evidence of mobility on Earth Cardiff UK (SPX) Feb 12, 2019
Ancient fossils of the first ever organisms to exhibit movement have been discovered by an international team of scientists.
Discovered in rocks in Gabon and dating back approximately 2.1 billion years, the fossils suggest the existence of a cluster of single cells that came together to form a slug-like multicellular organism that moved through the mud in search of a more favourable enviro ... more |
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Hughes satellite modems power beyond-line-of-sight comms for UAVs Germantown MD (SPX) Feb 11, 2019
Hughes Network Systems, LLC (HUGHES), the global leader in broadband satellite networks and services, has announced the first shipments of its specialized, multiband HM400 SATCOM modems to General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI), powering beyond-line-of-sight communications for their next-generation Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) known as the MQ-9B SkyGuardian.
Customized to m ... more |
Shedding light on the science of auroral breakups Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Feb 11, 2019
Auroras, also known as Northern or Southern lights depending on whether they occur near the North or South Pole, are natural displays of light in the Earth's sky. Typically these lights are dimly present at night. However, sometimes these otherwise faint features explode in brightness and can even break up into separate glowing hallmarks, appearing as spectacular bursts of luminous manifestation ... more |
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Raptor engine beats Russian RD-180 record in combustion chamber pressure says Musk Moscow (Sputnik) Feb 12, 2019
The new methane-fueled Raptor engine developed by US SpaceX aerospace company for its Starship interplanetary craft has outperformed the Russian RD-180 rocket engine in terms of pressure level in the combustion chamber, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said on Monday.
"Raptor reached 268.9 bar [approximately 274.2 kilograms of power per square centimeter], exceeding prior record held by the awesome Ru ... more |
Do you like Earth's solid surface and life-inclined climate Ann Arbor MI (SPX) Feb 12, 2019
Earth's solid surface and moderate climate may be due, in part, to a massive star in the birth environment of the Sun, according to new computer simulations of planet formation.
Without the star's radioactive elements injected into the early solar system, our home planet could be a hostile ocean world covered in global ice sheets.
"The results of our simulations suggest that there ar ... more |
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New squeezing record at GEO600 gravitational-wave detector Hannover, Germany (SPX) Dec 17, 2018
The detection of Einstein's gravitational waves relies on highly precise laser measurements of small length changes. The kilometer-size detectors of the international network (GEO600, LIGO, Virgo) are so sensitive that they are fundamentally limited by tiny quantum mechanical effects.
These cause a background noise which overlaps with gravitational-wave signals. This noise is always presen ... more |
Lightning's electromagnetic fields may have protective properties Tel Aviv, Israel (SPX) Feb 11, 2019
Lightning was the main electromagnetic presence in the Earth's atmosphere long before the invention of electricity. There are some 2,000 thunderstorms active at any given time, so humans and other organisms have been bathed in extremely low frequency (ELF) electromagnetic fields for billions of years.
These electromagnetic fields - the result of global lightning activity known as Schumann ... more |
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Trump orders government to prioritize artificial intelligence Washington (AFP) Feb 12, 2019
President Donald Trump on Monday ordered the US administration to give greater priority to artificial intelligence, a move seen as firing up a battle for leadership with China.
The American AI Initiative executive order calls for the administration to "devote the full resources of the federal government" to help fuel AI innovation.
"Americans have profited tremendously from being the ear ... more |
China improves Long March-6 rocket for growing commercial launches Beijing (XNA) Feb 12, 2019
China announced Monday that it is developing the modified version of the Long March-6 rocket to add four solid boosters to increase its carrying capacity.
The improved medium-left carrier rocket will be sent into space by 2020, according to the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology under the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, which designed the rocket.
The Long ... more |
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