NASA's $985 million Psyche mission to all-metal asteroid nears liftoff
Wednesday, 16 August 2023 09:27
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Preparations are proceeding for the early October launch of a NASA orbiter that uses futuristic electric propulsion technology for a rendezvous with 16 Psyche, the heart of a demolished planet believed to be made almost entirely of iron.
Named after its interplanetary target, the $985 million mission is intended to help scientists determine whether the 140-mile-wide asteroid - which varie Enjoying the Climb: Sols 3916-3918
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Earth planning date: Friday, August 11, 2023: In this weekend's plan, Curiosity is behaving much as you would as you climb a mountain. You pause occasionally to look around at what lies beneath your boots - the reward for your hard work up to that point. You also take time to enjoy the view and turn your gaze uphill to the path ahead - the unknown enticing you forward.
To do the former, Cu Rocket Lab to launch NASA Arctic ice caps satellites
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Rocket Lab USA, Inc. (Nasdaq: RKLB) has signed a double-launch deal with NASA to deliver the Agency's climate change research-focused mission, PREFIRE, to low Earth orbit in 2024.
The two dedicated missions on Electron will deploy one small satellite each to a 525km circular orbit from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand from May 2024. The PREFIRE mission has specific LTAN (Local Ti Momentus awarded innovation research contract from Space Development Agency
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Momentus Inc. (NASDAQ: MNTS) has signed a contract with the U.S. Defense Department's Space Development Agency (SDA) for a Small Business Innovation Research Award, "Orbital Service Vehicle Enhancements to Meet Department of Defense (DoD) Mission Requirements."
Under this award, Momentus will tailor the capabilities of its Vigoride Orbital Service Vehicle to support a full range of DoD pay Viasat Real-Time Earth opens ground station in Japan
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Viasat Inc. (NASDAQ: VSAT), today announced the opening of a Real-Time Earth (RTE) ground station in Hokkaido, Japan, now enabling RTE customers the ability to downlink Ka-band payload data in the northwestern Pacific at the site hosted by RTE partner Infostellar. This new ground site gives RTE customers unique access to a strategic location that reduces the time it takes to deliver mission crit KBR JV awarded $719M contract to aid NASA's development of space orbital systems
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KBR (NYSE: KBR) is pleased to announce NASA's award to the Space and Technology Solutions team, a KBR joint venture with Intuitive Machines (Nasdaq: LUNR, LUNRW), to provide multidisciplinary engineering for some of NASA's most critical space orbital systems in its Applied Engineering and Technology Directorate at Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Maryland. The Government Accountability Offi China's Kuaizhou-1A rocket launches five new satellites
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China launched a Kuaizhou 1A carrier rocket on Monday afternoon at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan province, placing five communication satellites in space, according to the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp.
The State-owned space contractor said in a news release that the solid-propellant rocket blasted off at 1:32 pm from its launch vehicle and soon deployed the He All Eyes on the Ice Giants
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NASA's New Horizons spacecraft plans to observe Uranus and Neptune from its location far out in the outer solar system this fall, and the mission team is inviting the global amateur astronomy community to come along for the ride - and make a real contribution to space science - by observing both ice giants at the same time.
In September - in tandem with the Hubble Space Telescope - New Hor Hundred-year storms? That's how long they last on Saturn.
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The largest storm in the solar system, a 10,000-mile-wide anticyclone called the Great Red Spot, has decorated Jupiter's surface for hundreds of years.
A new study now shows that Saturn - though much blander and less colorful than Jupiter - also has long-lasting megastorms with impacts deep in the atmosphere that persist for centuries.
The study was conducted by astronomers from the After capturing image of black hole, what's next?
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Agroup of international researchers led by the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard and Smithsonian (CfA) achieved the once-unimaginable four years ago: using a groundbreaking telescope to capture an image of a black hole.
Last month some of those researchers, engineers, and physicists convened at Harvard to consider and begin drawing up plans for the next step: a closer study of the photon r RTX to develop platform agnostic, beyond-line-of-sight, satcoms
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Collins Aerospace, an RTX (NYSE: RTX) business, has been awarded a $36 million contract from the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory to develop and demonstrate a platform-agnostic, Beyond-Line-Of-Sight, satellite communications pod.
The communications pod will provide warfighters resilient, high bandwidth, low latency communications and data directly to the cockpit. The pod brings together Talking with Webb using the Deep Space Network
Wednesday, 16 August 2023 08:55 Write a comment
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is nearly 1 million miles (1.5 million kilometer) away from Earth, orbiting around the sun-Earth Lagrange point 2. How do we send commands and receive telemetry—the science and engineering data from the observatory—from that far away? We use the DSN (Deep Space Network) to communicate with the observatory. We receive data when we have a contact with Webb using a DSN antenna
Sandy Kwan, the mission interface manager for Webb within the DSN, notes that "each mesmerizing Webb image that has graced our screens would not have been possible without the support of the DSN antennas and personnel, the backbone of interplanetary communication."
The DSN has three sites around the world, each positioned 120 degrees apart. There are antennas in Goldstone, California; Canberra, Australia; and Madrid, Spain. This allows us to communicate with Webb at any time of day, as the Earth rotates. The DSN is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California.
Russia's Luna-25 probe enters Moon orbit
Wednesday, 16 August 2023 08:53 Write a comment
Moscow's Luna-25 lander is due to reach the moon's orbit Wednesday, in the first such Russian mission in almost 50 years, according to the schedule of space agency Roscosmos.
With the lunar launch, Moscow's first since 1976, Russia is seeking to restart and rebuild on the Soviet Union's pioneering space program.
The lander is set to revolve 100 kilometers (62 miles) above the moon's surface, before a planned landing Monday north of the Boguslawsky crater on the lunar south pole.
Cameras installed on the lander have already taken distant shots of the Earth and moon from space, Roscosmos said.
The lander, weighing around 800 kilograms (1,764 pounds), was carried into space by a Soyuz rocket launched Friday from the Vostochny cosmodrome in Russia's Far East.
It is due to stay on the moon for a year, where it is tasked with collecting samples and analyzing soil.
The mission comes as the future of Russia's long-running cooperation with the West in space looks in doubt, as Moscow presses ahead with its offensive in Ukraine.
Russia said it would go ahead with its own lunar plans, despite the European Space Agency (ESA) announcing it would not cooperate with Moscow on future missions over its actions in Ukraine.
Edge of earthquake zone
Wednesday, 16 August 2023 05:17 Write a comment
Image:
Edge of earthquake zone 
