From a Distance!
Two spacecraft have managed to snag images of our Earth and the Moon, but from far, far away. NASA’s MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) orbiter circling Mercury took the image July 19 as part of a campaign to search for natural...Mercury Orbiter to Eye the Earth, Look for Moons
NASA’s MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft will capture images of Earth on July 19 and 20. The images on the second day will also include pictures of the Moon where all six of the Apollo landing sites will be...Astronomer Identifies Neptune’s 14th Moon
Some persistent detective work by SETI astronomer Mark Showalter turned up a tiny new moon of Neptune, the distant blue-green planet’s 14th. Showalter made the discovery July 1 after tracking the movement of a white dot that surfaced over and over again in 150...The Day the Earth Smiled
Space is about to become a giant photo booth. This coming week, step outside and get your picture taken. It’s a “long shot” that’s for sure…but the camera is adjusted to infinity. On July 19, the Cassini spacecraft that’s now in orbit around Saturn will be positioned...Second NASA Curiosity Mission Would Seek Evidence of Past Life on Mars
NASA is refining plans for a second SUV-sized Curiosity rover mission to Mars in 2020 that would search for evidence of past biological activity, a potential international enterprise whose results may address the prospects for life elsewhere in the solar system and...Pluto-bound Spacecraft Spots Charon
NASA’s Pluto-bound New Horizons spacecraft has spotted the ice-covered moon, Charon. The largest of Pluto’s five known moons, Charon orbits about 12,000 miles (more than 19,000 kilometers) away from Pluto itself. New Horizons spacecraft used its highest-resolution...NASA Prepares Recovery Plan for Kepler Planet Hunter
Launched in March 2009, NASA’s Kepler space telescope soon became the most prolific alien planet hunter ever. The search has so far produced just under 3,300 candidate planets, among them representatives of the mission’s ultimate goal — Earth-like...NASA Asteroid Retrieval Mission Becomes Global Grand Challenge
NASA’s proposed asteroid identification and redirect mission proposal was elevated to “Grand Challenge” status in Washington on Tuesday by the Obama Administration. The featured theme of President Obama’s proposed 2014 NASA budget is now on par...New Horizons to Pluto: Stay the Course!
Launched in January 2006, the NASA New Horizons mission to distant Pluto is on target to whisk by that faraway world in July 2015. New news from the New Horizons team: Unless significant new hazards are found, the spacecraft is set to stay on its original course past...Space Talk
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#NASA estimates that a human mission to Mars could take months or years with current propulsion technologies. To accelerate this timeline, NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are exploring nuclear thermal propulsion.
Learn more: https://bit.ly/4f8zDlE
#ICYMI, check out the latest recap of space exploration, science and policy news from CDSE's Deep Space Extra newsletter.
Read it here: https://exploredeepspace.com/news/deep-space-extra-39-2024-09-30/
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.@NASA_Langley is testing the Lightweight Surface Manipulation System AutoNomy capabilities Development for Surface Operations (LANDO), a robotic arm designed to lift payloads and place them on the #lunar surface.
Read more: https://bit.ly/3NbFYAO
📷: NASA/David C. Bowman
#ICYMI, check out the latest recap of space exploration, science and policy news from CDSE's Deep Space Extra newsletter.
Read it here: https://exploredeepspace.com/news/deep-space-extra-38-2024-09-23/
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