Copernical Team
NASA Awards Mars Ascent Propulsion System Contract for Sample Return
NASA has awarded the Mars Ascent Propulsion System (MAPS) contract to Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation of Elkton, Maryland, to provide propulsion support and products for spaceflight missions at the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
Coupled with the successful touchdown of the Mars Perseverance rover, this award moves NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) one NASA and Boeing Evaluating Launch Date for Orbital Flight Test-2
NASA and Boeing are evaluating a new target launch date for the CST-100 Starliner's Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2) to the International Space Station after winter storms in Houston, and the recent replacement of avionics boxes, set the program back about two weeks. NASA also is weighing the volume of verification and validation analysis required prior to the test flight and the visiting vehicle s Space Traffic Management
Those familiar with air traffic management architectures understand the constraints of aircraft flying in the atmosphere, vehicle dynamics and command and control techniques. Unfortunately, space traffic has many more degrees of freedom and much less control capability. Add to this the completely uncontrolled nature of space debris and the reality that most debris objects cannot be tracked and m Mission Commander Thrives as 'Space Gardener'
NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins' enthusiasm for learning to grow plants in space has proven fruitful for the agency's Vegetable Production System (Veggie).
The Expedition 64 crew member, who arrived at the International Space Station in November 2020 aboard NASA's SpaceX Crew-1 for a six-month science mission, has tended to multiple plant experiments on station. Astronaut Kate Rubins had alrea 'Astounding' Mars rover landing inspired world, Biden says in call to NASA
President Joe Biden called NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Thursday to congratulate staff on last month's Mars rover Perseverance landing, which he said inspired the world during a difficult time.
The call included thousands of JPL employees, JPL Director Michael Watkins and Swati Mohan, an operations lead for the Feb. 8 landing.
Biden made the call just after 5 p.m. EST whil NASA, Japanese astronauts plan spacewalk Friday
Astronauts Kate Rubins and Soichi Noguchi are scheduled to conduct the 236th spacewalk in International Space Station history Friday morning.
Rubins, of NASA, and Noguchi, of the Japanese Space Agency, will spend about 6 1/2 hours outside the orbiting space station starting about 7 a.m. EST.
They will perform such maintenance as venting ammonia from an external fixture and instal SpaceX: more risks, better rockets?
A prototype of SpaceX's unmanned rocket Starship exploded on Wednesday, the third time a test flight ended in flames.
The mishaps may seem like disasters but experts say these incidents are part of the spaceship's development, and even, in a way, beneficial.
- What is Starship? -
SpaceX is developing the rocket with the goal of sending humans to the Moon on it from 2023, and then t SpaceX successfully launches 20th Starlink mission
SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon 9 rocket loaded with dozens of additional Starlink communications satellites into space early Thursday after previous launch attempts were delayed.
The rocket lifted off at 3:24 EST from the historic pad 39A of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, with the mission to put 60 more Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit as part of the plan to offer l Chinese volunteers live in Lunar Palace 1 closed environment for 370 days
Volunteer students at Beihang University have reportedly lived in the Lunar Palace 1 biosphere environment for 370 days. Media outlets have reported that two groups of students took turns living in the biosphere over the course of 370 days, and required minimal supplies from the outside.
Many groups have tried building and living in biospheres over the years. The goal has always been to find out if it is possible to build a self-sustaining ecosystem that could be used on another planet. The most well-known was Biosphere 2—it was built in the Arizona desert and hosted people for two years, but ultimately failed in its goal to remain self-supporting. However, such efforts have led to a better understanding of how a real biosphere might work and how plants might be grown beyond Earth.
Over the past several years, the Chinese government has made it clear that they plan to send people to the moon in the coming years. They also plan to build a permanent colony there, to be shared with other countries, as soon as it is feasible. As part of that effort, they have been planning, building and testing biospheres since 2014.
Volcanoes might light up the night sky of this exoplanet
Until now, researchers have found no evidence of global tectonic activity on planets outside our solar system. Under the leadership of the University of Bern and the National Center of Competence in Research NCCR PlanetS, scientists have now found that the material inside planet LHS 3844b flows from one hemisphere to the other and could be responsible for numerous volcanic eruptions on one side of the planet.