Kennedy Space Center FL (SPX) Oct 30, 2023
NASA and its industry partners Boeing and SpaceX are planning for the next set of missions to the International Space Station for the agency's Commercial Crew Program. b>Crew-8 br> /b> NASA's SpaceX Crew-8 mission to the orbiting laboratory is targeted to launch no earlier than mid-February. The mission will carry NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, commander; Michael Barratt, pilot; and m

Washington DC (UPI) Oct 30, 2023
The United States and Australia marked a significant milestone in their long partnership with the signing of a bilateral tech agreement Thursday. The assistant secretary for international security and nonproliferation at the U.S. State Department, C.S. Eliot Kang, and the Australian Ambassador to the United States, Kevin Rudd, signed the U.S.-Australia Technology Safeguards Agreement in an

Washington DC (SPX) Oct 30, 2023
The Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History will unveil the first public display of a sample of Bennu-a carbon-rich, near-Earth asteroid-to museumgoers Friday, Nov. 3. The rocky fragment was collected from the asteroid by NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission, the first U.S. space mission to sample the surface of a planetary body since Apollo 17 in 1972. Samples from Bennu may provide insights into

Pasadena CA (JPL) Oct 30, 2023
Buried ice will be a vital resource for the first people to set foot on Mars, serving as drinking water and a key ingredient for rocket fuel. But it would also be a major scientific target: Astronauts or robots could one day drill ice cores much as scientists do on Earth, uncovering the climate history of Mars and exploring potential habitats (past or present) for microbial life. The need

Pasadena CA (JPL) Oct 27, 2023
The Curiosity rover team has been preparing for the start of the Solar Conjunction in November, when contact with all Mars spacecraft will be impossible for three weeks since Mars will be behind the Sun as seen from Earth. During that time, Curiosity will be following a long plan of instructions which were confirmed to have been successfully uploaded to the rover earlier this week. For now, Curi

Edwards AFB CA (SPX) Oct 30, 2023
A research team from the University of Central Florida recently tested an instrument designed to measure the size and speed of surface particles kicked up by the exhaust from a rocket-powered lander on the Moon or Mars. Supported by NASA's Flight Opportunities program, researchers evaluated the instrument in a series of flight tests on Astrobotic's Xodiac rocket-powered lander in Mojave, Califor

Leicester UK (SPX) Oct 30, 2023
The presence of an infrared aurora on the cold, outer planet of Uranus has been confirmed for the first time by University of Leicester astronomers. The discovery could shed light on the mysteries behind the magnetic fields of the planets of our solar system, and even on whether distant worlds might support life. The team of scientists, supported by the Science and Technology Facilit

Providence RI (SPX) Oct 30, 2023
Venus, a scorching wasteland of a planet according to scientists, may have once had tectonic plate movements similar to those believed to have occurred on early Earth, a new study found. The finding sets up tantalizing scenarios regarding the possibility of early life on Venus, its evolutionary past and the history of the solar system. Writing in Nature Astronomy, a team of scientists led