Copernical Team
Mars rock drilling begins after NASA's helicopter helps plan rover's route
Aided by the latest photos from Mars helicopter Ingenuity, NASA's robotic rover Perseverance prepared to drill its first rock sample, the space agency said.
The agency decided the drilling will occur at an area called Crater Floor Fractured Rough. NASA planned to send the first signals Thursday to start the drilling process, which could take several days, according to the agency. NASA is recruiting for yearlong simulated Mars Mission
Mars is calling! NASA is seeking applicants for participation as a crew member during the first one-year analog mission in a habitat to simulate life on a distant world, set to begin in Fall 2022.
As NASA ventures farther into the cosmos, the astronaut experience will change. In preparation for the real-life challenges of future missions to Mars, NASA will study how highly motivated indivi NASA continues RS-25 testing with 6th installment at Stennis
NASA conducted its sixth RS-25 single-engine hot fire Aug. 5 on the A-1 Test Stand at Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, a continuation of its seven-part test series to support development and production of engines for the agency's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on future missions to the Moon.
Operators fired the engine for more than eight minutes (500 seconds), the sa SpaceX briefly puts together largest rocket in history at Texas base
SpaceX briefly constructed the largest rocket ever made Friday, attaching the U.S. aerospace company's Starship spacecraft to the Super Heavy booster at its facility in Texas.
The combined height of the structure was 400 feet, nearly 40 feet taller than the next largest Saturn V rocket built by NASA.
The SpaceX rocket, though, will have about twice as much thrust as Saturn V, 70 Virgin Galactic restarting space tickets from $450,000
After flying its founder Richard Branson to space, Virgin Galactic is restarting ticket sales beginning at $450,000, the company announced Thursday.
The new price is about double the $200,000 to $250,000 paid by around 600 people who previously booked seats on Virgin's spaceship between 2005 and 2014, as the company looks to cash in on the success of last month's fully-crewed test flight. China's Mars rover travels over 800 meters on red planet
China's Mars rover Zhurong has traveled more than 800 meters on the surface of the red planet as of Friday, according to the Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center of the China National Space Administration.
Zhurong has been traversing a complex terrain full of rocks, craters and dunes, and its rear hazard-avoidance camera captured a picture of the rover just moving across the rocks. CAPSTONE's cubesat prepares for Lunar mission
Small spacecraft will play a big role in lunar exploration, including a Moon-bound CubeSat launching later this year. The Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, or CAPSTONE, mission team is making the final preparations for the spacecraft that will make CubeSat history over a series of technological and operational firsts for the small platform. Mars Perseverance team assessing first sampling attempt
Data sent to Earth by NASA's Perseverance rover after its first attempt to collect a rock sample on Mars and seal it in a sample tube indicate that no rock was collected during the initial sampling activity.
The rover carries 43 titanium sample tubes, and is exploring Jezero Crater, where it will be gathering samples of rock and regolith (broken rock and dust) for future analysis on Earth. Want to pretend to live on Mars? For a whole year? Apply now
A few steps closer to Europa: Spacecraft hardware makes headway
Take a closer look at the complex choreography involved in building NASA's Europa Clipper as the mission to explore Jupiter's moon Europa approaches its 2024 launch date.
The hardware that makes up NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft is rapidly taking shape, as engineering components and instruments are prepared for delivery to the main clean room at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. In workshops and labs across the country and in Europe, teams are crafting the complex pieces that make up the whole as mission leaders direct the elaborate choreography of building a flagship mission.
The massive 10-foot-tall (3-meter-tall) propulsion module recently moved from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, to the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, where engineers will install electronics, radios, antennas, and cabling. The spacecraft's thick aluminum vault, which will protect Europa Clipper's electronics from Jupiter's intense radiation, is nearing completion at JPL. The building and testing of the science instruments at universities and partner institutions across the country continue as well.
