Huntsville AL (SPX) Dec 25, 2020
Designed and built by Northrop Grumman, the Chandra X-ray Observatory is part of NASA's fleet of "Great Observatories," allowing scientists from around the world to explore very hot regions of exploded stars, clusters of galaxies and matter around black holes. In an elliptical orbit over 85,000 miles from the Earth, Chandra's X-ray images of some of the most extreme phenomena are leading to disc

Sriharikota, India (SPX) Dec 25, 2020
India's second mission to the Moon, Chandrayaan-2 was launched on 22nd July 2019 from Satish Dhawan Space Center, Sriharikota. The Orbiter which was injected into a lunar orbit on 2nd Sept 2019, carries 8 experiments to address many open questions on lunar science. All experiments have been performing well and the data received, suggests excellent capability to deliver on the pre-launch promises

Beijing (XNA) Dec 25, 2020
China's lunar rover Yutu-2, or Jade Rabbit-2, has survived 719 Earth days and traveled 600.55 meters on the far side of the moon as of Tuesday. Both the lander and the rover of the Chang'e-4 probe have ended their work for the 25th lunar day, and switched to the dormant mode for the lunar night due to the lack of solar power, according to the Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center of t

Orlando FL (UPI) Dec 25, 2020
Elon Musk's SpaceX, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and a lesser-known company, Huntsville, Ala.-based Dynetics, are preparing for a major decision by NASA early in 2021 about which company will build human-carrying landers for trips to the moon. The three space firms were selected in April to submit proposals early this month. Having done that, they now await NASA's decision, which is scheduled

Washington DC (SPX) Dec 25, 2020
It took fifteen years of imaging and nearly three years of stitching the pieces together to create the largest image ever made, the 8-trillion-pixel mosaic of Mars' surface. Now, the first study to utilize the image in its entirety provides unprecedented insight into the ancient river systems that once covered the expansive plains in the planet's southern hemisphere. These three billion-year-old

Changchun, China (XNA) Dec 25, 2020
An international team of researchers has identified over 109,000 previously unrecognized impact craters on the moon using machine learning methods. The study, led by researchers from Jilin University, was published in the journal Nature Communications. Impact craters are the most prominent lunar surface feature and occupy most of the moon's surface. With traditional automatic identif

Changsha, China (XNA) Dec 25, 2020
China plans to launch the core module of its manned space station in the first half of 2021, a senior official said Friday. The core module will be sent by a Long March-5B Y2 rocket from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in Hainan Province, said Zhou Jianping, chief designer of China's manned space program, at a handover ceremony for the return capsule of the Shenzhou-10 manned spacecraf

Washington DC (UPI) Dec 25, 2020
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic demanded the attention of thousands of scientists, but they had a lot to look in to, including vaccines and treatments for the novel coronavirus. Many scientists kept their attention on the skies, searching for answers to cosmic mysteries and preparing for the next chapter in the history of human spaceflight. Here are five of the most astounding space-r

Moscow (Sputnik) Dec 25, 2020
The United States may buy a seat on Russia's Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft to deliver its astronaut to the International Space Station (ISS) in the spring of 2021, a source in the space and rocket industry told Sputnik. In November, the Russian state space corporation of Roscosmos said that the crew of the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft, whose launch is scheduled for April 9, will consist of three Russia