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NASA prepares to say 'Farewell' to InSight spacecraft
A thick layer of dust can be seen on the lander and its solar panels on April 24, 2022. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The day is approaching when NASA's Mars InSight lander will fall silent, ending its history-making mission to reveal secrets of the Red Planet's interior. The spacecraft's power generation continues to decline as windblown dust on its solar panels thickens, so the team has taken steps to continue as long as possible with what power remains. The end is expected to come in the next few weeks.

But even as the tightknit 25-to-30-member operations team—a small group compared to other Mars missions—continues to squeeze the most they can out of InSight (short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport), they've also begun taking steps to wind down the mission.

Here's a glimpse of what that looks like.

Preserving data

The most important of the final steps with the InSight mission is storing its trove of data and making it accessible to researchers around the world.

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The Defense Innovation Unit on Nov. 2 announced new agreements with Amazon Web Services, Kuiper Government Solutions, Microsoft Azure Space and SpiderOak Mission Systems.

The post Amazon, Microsoft, SpiderOak join Defense Innovation Unit’s hybrid space network project appeared first on SpaceNews.

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Electron descending

Rocket Lab says it will make a second mid-air recovery attempt of an Electron booster during the launch later this week of a Swedish scientific satellite.

The post Rocket Lab to attempt booster recovery on upcoming Electron launch appeared first on SpaceNews.

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Los Angeles CA (SPX) Nov 02, 2022
Rocket Lab USA, Inc. (Nasdaq: RKLB) has confirmed that it will attempt to catch an Electron rocket with a helicopter as it returns to Earth from space during the Company's next launch. Rocket Lab's 32nd Electron launch, the "Catch Me If You Can" mission, is scheduled to launch from Pad B at Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 during a launch window opening on November 04, UTC. Electron will carry
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Washington DC (UPI) Nov 1, 2021
NASA's InSight spacecraft is nearing the end of its life after four years on Mars. The Mars InSight lander was sent to the Red Planet in 2018 to study its crust, mantle and core. Heavy dust buildup on its solar panels, the chief source of its power supply, is bringing it within weeks of becoming inoperable, NASA said Tuesday. Officials said the lander is operating at about 20% of
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San Antonio TX (SPX) Nov 02, 2022
On September 26, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft crashed into Dimorphos, a moonlet of the near-Earth asteroid Didymos, at 14,000 miles per hour. Prior to the impact, Southwest Research Institute engineers and scientists performed an experiment to study the cratering process that produces the mass of ejected materials and measures the subsequent momentum enhancement of t
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Durham NH (SPX) Nov 02, 2022
Research from a team of physicists at the University of New Hampshire is advancing the understanding of how protons, which comprise 95% of the mass of the visible universe, interact with each other. The results provide a benchmark for testing the strong force, one of the four fundamental forces in nature. "There's a lot still unanswered about both of those things, the proton and the strong
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Vienna VA (SPX) Nov 02, 2022
Spire Global, Inc. (NYSE: SPIR), a leading global provider of space-based data, analytics and space services, was awarded a contract by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to deliver a preliminary design for a satellite that would carry an array of sensors to very low Earth orbit (VLEO) for in-situ ionosphere measurements. The award is part of DARPA's Ouija program, which
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Beijing (XNA) Nov 01, 2022
China's Mengtian space lab module, the third major component of the nation's Tiangong space station, was launched on Monday afternoon in a key step to complete the in-orbit assembly of Tiangong. The lab module's carrier - a Long March 5B heavy-lift rocket - blasted off at 3:37 pm from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in the southernmost island province of Hainan. After flying more th
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Washington (AFP) Nov 1, 2022
SpaceX launched its Falcon Heavy rocket from Florida Tuesday, the first flight since 2019 of the world's most powerful rocket. Mission USSF-44, transporting cargo for the US Space Force, including the TETRA 1 satellite, blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center around 9:40 am (1340 GMT). Several minutes later, the rocket's two side boosters made their way back to Earth - the craft's m
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Beijing, China (SPX) Nov 02, 2022
Solar sail, a form of longevous spacecraft without propellant demand, attracts numerous aerospace researchers' attention. Its prolongable peculiarity enables its tremendous potential in diverse interplanetary missions. Due to the harsh space environment, it is inevitable that the spacecraft with long time on-orbit suffers the performance degradation and accident. Especially, the force model will
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Cape Canaveral FL (SPX) Nov 02, 2022
Sidus Space, Inc. (NASDAQ:SIDU), a Space-as-a-Service company focused on mission critical hardware manufacturing combined with commercial satellite design, manufacture, launch, and data collection, announced agreement with Dawn Aerospace ("Dawn") to implement its green, chemical propulsion technology into LizzieSat. Among the novel characteristics of Sidus Space's proprietary LizzieSat is
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Washington DC (UPI) Nov 01, 2022
China successfully launched the third and final module needed to complete the Tiangong Space Station. The Chinese National Space Administration announced its Mengtian module arrived in low Earth orbit after a 13-hour voyage. Mengtian was carried to orbit by a Long March 5B, which was designed specifically to launch the Tiangong modules into space. Mengtian, which translates to "Dream
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Beijing, China (SPX) Oct 28, 2022
A high-altitude scientific balloon containing 1.2-ton payloads was lifted into the sky and reached an altitude of 30km in a demonstration test that helped validate the payload capacity of a near-space balloon platform. The flight test was conducted in northwestern China's Qinghai Province on September 30, 2022 by a research team from the Aerospace Information Research Institute (AIR), Chin
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Cologne, Germany (SPX) Nov 01, 2022
Data from two meteorite impacts on Mars recorded by NASA's InSight spacecraft provide new insights into the structure of the Martian crust. Previously, researchers had observed many quakes whose waves spread from the epicentre of a quake through the interior of the planet. Since then, they had been hoping for an event that would also generate waves traveling along the planet's surface. On
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