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January 18, 2017
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MARSDAILY
Mars Rover Curiosity Examines Possible Mud Cracks



Pasadena CA (JPL) Jan 18, 2017
Scientists used NASA's Curiosity Mars rover in recent weeks to examine slabs of rock cross-hatched with shallow ridges that likely originated as cracks in drying mud. "Mud cracks are the most likely scenario here," said Curiosity science team member Nathan Stein. He is a graduate student at Caltech in Pasadena, California, who led the investigation of a site called "Old Soaker," on lower Mount Sharp, Mars. If this interpretation holds up, these would be the first mud cracks - technically cal ... read more

MARSDAILY
Opportunity Continues Its Journey South Along Crater Rim
Opportunity is located on the rim of Endeavour Crater, heading south along the rim. The near-term plan is to reach a valley called 'Willamette' where grooves are seen in orbital imagery. The r ... more
MARSDAILY
HI-SEAS Mission V crew preparing to enter Mars simulation habitat
The crew has been selected, and research studies confirmed for the 2017 mission of the University of Hawai?i at Manoa's Hawai?i Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS). At approximat ... more
MARSDAILY
New Year yields interesting bright soil for Opportunity rover
Opportunity is located on the rim of Endeavour crater, heading south along the rim. The near-term plan is to reach a valley called "Willamette" where grooves are seen in orbital imagery. Just ... more
TECH SPACE
APL provides key instruments for NASA dual Discovery Missions
Scientists and engineers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory will provide instruments on NASA's two newest missions, Lucy and Psyche, which will explore, respectively, six of ... more
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MARSDAILY
Hues in a Crater Slope
Impact craters expose the subsurface materials on the steep slopes of Mars. However, these slopes often experience rockfalls and debris avalanches that keep the surface clean of dust, revealing a va ... more
MARSDAILY
3-D images reveal features of Martian polar ice caps
Three-dimensional subsurface images are revealing structures within the Martian polar ice caps, including previously obscured layering, a larger volume of frozen carbon dioxide contained in the sout ... more
DRAGON SPACE
China Plans to Launch 1st Mars Probe by 2020 - State Council Information Office
China is planning to conduct the first orbiting and roving exploration of Mars by 2020, the country's State Council Information Office (SCIO) said Tuesday in a report. "China intends to execut ... more
MARSDAILY
Odyssey recovering from precautionary pause in activity
NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter, which has been in service at Mars since October 2001, put itself into safe mode - a protective standby status - on Dec. 26, while remaining in communication with Earth. ... more
MARSDAILY
Small Troughs Growing on Mars May Become 'Spiders'
Erosion-carved troughs that grow and branch during multiple Martian years may be infant versions of larger features known as Martian "spiders," which are radially patterned channels found only in th ... more


Full go-ahead for building ExoMars 2020

MARSDAILY
Opportunity performs several drives to ancient gully
Opportunity is making progress towards the next science objective of the extended mission. The rover is headed toward an ancient water-carved gully about a kilometer south of the rover's current loc ... more
MARSDAILY
All eyes on Trump over Mars
The year 2016 has seen a rekindling of the human desire to conquer Mars, with public and private interests openly vying to take the first step on the Red Planet, possibly with a stopover on the Moon. ... more

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The moon is older than scientists thought
A UCLA-led research team reports that the moon is at least 4.51 billion years old, or 40 million to 140 million years older than scientists previously thought. The findings - based on an analysis of minerals from the moon called zircons that were brought back to Earth by the Apollo 14 mission in 1971 - are published Jan. 11 in the journal Science Advances. The moon's age has been a hotly d ... more
Eugene Cernan, last man to walk on moon, dead at 82

New map of the Moon under creation in China

How the Moons That Came Before Collided to Form the Moon

China's first cargo spacecraft to leave factory
China's first cargo spacecraft will leave the factory, according to the website of China's manned space mission. A review meeting was convened last Thursday, during which officials and experts unanimously concluded that the Tianzhou-1 cargo spacecraft had met all the requirements to leave the factory. The take-off weight of Tianzhou-1 is 13 tonnes and it can ship material of up to si ... more
China launches commercial rocket mission Kuaizhou-1A

China Space Plan to Develop "Strength and Size"

Beijing's space program soars in 2016



Station crew get special delivery from Virginia
This week, astronauts are unloading more than 5,000 pounds of cargo and crew supplies from the Cygnus spacecraft to support dozens of science and research investigations. However, this shipment has special significance. This shipment arrived via an Antares rocket from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport's pad 0A at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility. Rocket launches to the International Space ... more
Orbital cargo ship arrives at space station

New Instrument on ISS to Study Ultra-Cold Quantum Gases

Two Russians, one American blast off to ISS

Lowell Observatory to renovate Pluto discovery telescope
The instrument at Lowell Observatory used by Clyde Tombaugh to discover Pluto will soon undergo renovation. The year-long project, set to begin on January 12, will include restoration of both the historic telescope and the wooden dome that houses it. While the telescope will be removed from the dome during this work, the dome will be open from time to time for public tours as work allows. ... more
Flying observatory makes observations of Jupiter previously only possible from space

How a moon slows the decay of Pluto's atmosphere

York U research identifies icy ridges on Pluto

Huygens: 'Ground Truth' From an Alien Moon
After a two-and-a-half-hour descent, the metallic, saucer-shaped spacecraft came to rest with a thud on a dark floodplain covered in cobbles of water ice, in temperatures hundreds of degrees below freezing. The alien probe worked frantically to collect and transmit images and data about its environs - in mere minutes its mothership would drop below the local horizon, cutting off its link to the ... more
Catching Cassini's call

NASA image showcases Saturn's sun-soaked north pole

Cassini offers a crash course in ring world orbital mechanics

Sentinel-2B launch preparations off to a flying start
Some of us may be easing ourselves gently into the New Year, but for the team readying Sentinel-2B for liftoff on 7 March it's full steam ahead. On 5 January, the satellite was shipped from ESA's site in the Netherlands - where it had been undergoing testing since June - and arrived safe and sound in French Guiana the following day. The Sentinel-2 mission is designed as two satellites work ... more
China receives imagery from high-resolution remote sensing satellites

Study tracks 'memory' of soil moisture

SAGE III to Provide Highly Accurate Measurements of Atmospheric Gases



French, US astronauts install batteries outside space station
French astronaut Thomas Pesquet floated into space on his first-ever spacewalk Friday, and helped install three new, refrigerator-sized lithium-ion batteries to upgrade the power system at the International Space Station. Wearing a white spacesuit with the French flag emblazoned on one shoulder, Pesquet and US astronaut Shane Kimbrough switched on their spacesuits' internal battery power to ... more
'Hidden Figures' soars in second week atop box office

The dust never settles on the Space Station

Real time imaging and transcriptome analysis of medaka aboard space station

Looking for life in all the right places with the right tool
Researchers have invented a range of instruments from giant telescopes to rovers to search for life in outer space, but so far, these efforts have yielded no definitive evidence that it exists beyond Earth. Now scientists have developed a new tool that can look for signs of life with 10,000 times more sensitivity than instruments carried on previous spaceflight missions. Their report appears in ... more
Could dark streaks in Venusian clouds be microbial life

VLT to Search for Planets in Alpha Centauri System

Hubble detects 'exocomets' taking the plunge into a young star



GenDyn offers Bluefin SandShark mini-drone for sale online
A small autonomous underwater vehicle for defense and commercial use in now available for purchase online from General Dynamics Mission Systems. The new Bluefin SandShark weighs less than 11 pounds - before adding a mission payload - fits in a backpack, can swim up to five knots and dive down to 656 feet, the company said. Its tail section houses the battery and system electron ... more
Liteye, Tribalco to deliver AUDS systems to U.S. armed forces

UAV performs first ever perched landing using machine learning algorithms

IS using hobby drones to bomb Iraqi forces in Mosul: US official

Next-generation optics offer the widest real-time views of vast regions of the sun
A groundbreaking new optical device, developed at NJIT's Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO) to correct images of the Sun distorted by multiple layers of atmospheric turbulence, is providing scientists with the most precisely detailed, real-time pictures to date of solar activity occurring across vast stretches of the star's surface. The observatory's 1.6-meter New Solar Telescope can now pr ... more
ALMA starts observing the sun

NASA moon data provides more accurate 2017 eclipse path

Moore Foundation provides libraries with a millione solar-eclipse viewers



Next Cygnus Mission to Station Set for March
Orbital ATK has completed a significant mission milestone for NASA's next International Space Station cargo mission. The Pressurized Cargo Module (PCM) of the Cygnus spacecraft has arrived at NASA's Kennedy Space Center for processing and assembly before launch. The OA-7 mission is targeted to launch on Thursday, March 16 from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in ... more
ISRO set to increase vehicle capacity to accommodate more space launches

Ruptured oxidant tank likely cause of Progress accident

SpaceX launches, lands rocket for first time since Sept blast

Farthest stars in Milky Way might be ripped from another galaxy
The 11 farthest known stars in our galaxy are located about 300,000 light-years from Earth, well outside the Milky Way's spiral disk. New research by Harvard astronomers shows that half of those stars might have been ripped from another galaxy: the Sagittarius dwarf. Moreover, they are members of a lengthy stream of stars extending one million light-years across space, or 10 times the width of o ... more
Astrophysicists Discover Dimming of Binary Star

Astronomy prof, student predict explosion that will change the night sky

A dozen and one neutron stars



China to set up gravitational wave telescopes in Tibet
China is working to set up the world's highest altitude gravitational wave telescopes in Tibet Autonomous Region to detect the faintest echoes resonating from the universe, which may reveal more about the Big Bang. Construction has started for the first telescope, code-named Ngari No.1, 30 km south of Shiquanhe Town in Ngari Prefecture, said Yao Yongqiang, chief researcher with the Nationa ... more
MIT researchers reveal new technique for measuring gravity

A population of neutron stars can generate gravitational waves continuously

LISA Pathfinder's pioneering mission continues

Our galaxy's black hole is spewing out planet-size 'spitballs'
Every few thousand years, an unlucky star wanders too close to the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. The black hole's powerful gravity rips the star apart, sending a long streamer of gas whipping outward. That would seem to be the end of the story, but it's not. New research shows that not only can the gas gather itself into planet-size objects, but those objects then are flung througho ... more
CU Boulder to lead operations for NASA black holes mission

Seeing the quantum future literally

LIGO expected to detect more binary black hole mergers



Scientists proposed a novel regional path tracking scheme for autonomous ground vehicles
For autonomous ground vehicles (AGVs), one of the most important issues is path tracking. Conventionally, steering and velocity control are generally two typical aspects in path tracking problem. Steering control is discussed in this manuscript because it is important to path tracking and related to vehicle lateral stability. Most of the existing algorithms are developed based on point-line vehi ... more
Robots need 'kill switches', warn Euro MPs

Robots show their 'personality' at big tech show

Cheery robots may make creepy companions, but could be intelligent assistants

China's first cargo spacecraft to leave factory
China's first cargo spacecraft will leave the factory, according to the website of China's manned space mission. A review meeting was convened last Thursday, during which officials and experts unanimously concluded that the Tianzhou-1 cargo spacecraft had met all the requirements to leave the factory. The take-off weight of Tianzhou-1 is 13 tonnes and it can ship material of up to si ... more
China launches commercial rocket mission Kuaizhou-1A

China Space Plan to Develop "Strength and Size"

Beijing's space program soars in 2016

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