Foust Forward | Building a space industry in Steel City
John Thornton and others want to ensure that Astrobotic isn’t the only space company in Pittsburgh or the wider region.
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NASA's InSight lander: The lonely fate of a robot on Mars
Covered in the red dust that sealed its fate, the NASA InSight lander is slowly shutting down, more than 250 million kilometers from home.
With its solar panels now obscured by the red planet's debris, the four-year-old robot is running out of power. One by one, its instruments are being taken offline: its robotic arm moving into "retirement pose," its seismometer likely to be turned off sometime in June.
Dr. Catherine Johnson, co-investigator on the InSight science team and professor in the department of earth, ocean and atmospheric sciences, discusses what the team discovered, what questions are left to answer, and just what will happen to the little lander that could.
What was the lander's mission and what did it find?
Space Development Agency’s satellite contractors team up to deal with supply shortages
The Space Development Agency and its contractors have had to scramble to deal with parts shortages and other supply chain problems that have affected the entire space industry.
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Military experiment demonstrates intersatellite laser communications in low Earth orbit
Two small satellites launched last summer by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency successfully established an optical link during a nearly 40-minute test.
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NASA's InSight still hunting marsquakes as power levels diminish
Dusty solar panels and darker skies are expected to bring the Mars lander mission to a close around the end of this year.
NASA's InSight Mars lander is gradually losing power and is anticipated to end science operations later this summer. By December, InSight's team expects the lander to have become inoperative, concluding a mission that has thus far detected more than 1,300 marsquakes—most recently, a magnitude 5 that occurred on May 4—and located quake-prone regions of the Red Planet.
The information gathered from those quakes has allowed scientists to measure the depth and composition of Mars' crust, mantle, and core. Additionally, InSight (short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) has recorded invaluable weather data and studied remnants of Mars' ancient magnetic field.
Solar heat likely the primary cause of dust storms on Mars
A team of scientists, including Dr. German Martinez from the Universities Space Research Association at LPI, just published a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This study indicates there are seasonal energy imbalances in the amount of solar energy absorbed and released by Mars which is a likely cause of dust storms, and could play an important role in understanding th Dwarf planet Ceres was formed in coldest zone of Solar System and thrust into Asteroid Belt
In an article published in the journal Icarus, researchers at Sao Paulo State University (UNESP) and collaborators report the findings of a study reconstituting the formation of the dwarf planet Ceres. The research was conducted by Rafael Ribeiro de Sousa, a professor in the program of graduate studies in physics on the Guaratingueta campus. The co-authors of the article are Ernesto Vieira Neto, Astronauts may one day drink water from ancient moon volcanoes
Billions of years ago, a series of volcanic eruptions broke loose on the moon, blanketing hundreds of thousands of square miles of the orb's surface in hot lava. Over the eons, that lava created the dark blotches, or maria, that give the face of the moon its familiar appearance today.
Now, new research from CU Boulder suggests that volcanoes may have left another lasting impact on the luna NASA Seeks Input on Moon to Mars Objectives, Comments Due May 31
As NASA moves forward with plans to send astronauts to the Moon under Artemis missions to prepare for human exploration of Mars, the agency is calling on U.S. industry, academia, international communities, and other stakeholders to provide input on its deep space exploration objectives.
NASA released a draft set of high-level objectives Tuesday, May 17, identifying 50 points falling under Rocket engine exhaust pollution extends high into Earth's atmosphere
Reusable space technology has led to a rise in space transportation at a lower cost, as popularized by commercial spaceflights of companies like SpaceX and Virgin Galactic. What is poorly understood, however, is rockets' propulsion emissions creating significant heating and compositional changes in the atmosphere.
In Physics of Fluids, by AIP Publishing, researchers from the University of 
