VIPER lunar rover mission cost increases
WASHINGTON — A NASA rover mission to look for ice at the south pole of the moon has passed a key review, but now costs significantly more than previously advertised.
NASA’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) mission passed its confirmation review Feb.
Monitoring methane emissions from gas pipelines
For the first time, scientists, using satellite data from the Copernicus Sentinel missions, are now able to detect individual methane plumes leaking from natural gas pipelines around the globe.
Falcon 9 launches Starlink satellites, lands booster
WASHINGTON — A SpaceX Falcon 9 launched a new set of Starlink satellites and landed the booster March 4, two and a half weeks after the landing failed on the previous launch.
The Falcon 9 lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center at 3:24 a.m.
Chinese astronauts training for space station crewed flights
SpaceX Starship lands upright, then explodes in latest test
DoD space agency to award multiple contracts for up to 150 satellites
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon’s Space Development Agency will solicit bids for an upcoming procurement of up to 150 satellites to be launched in late 2024, agency director Derek Tournear said March 4.
S. Korea’s Kencoa Aerospace expands space business in U.S. with new capital
SEOUL, South Korea — Kencoa Aerospace Corp., a South Korean aircraft assembler and parts supplier that has NASA, SpaceX and Blue Origin as clients, is planning to expand its U.S. parts manufacturing plant in Georgia.
The company raised 30 billion won ($26.6 million) in February by issuing convertible bonds to domestic institutional investors and will use a third of the newly raised fund for the expansion of its Eastman, Georgia-based affiliate, Kencoa Aerospace LLC, said a Kencoa investor relations manager.
Organic materials essential for life on Earth are found for the first time on the surface of an asteroid
New research from Royal Holloway, has found water and organic matter on the surface of an asteroid sample returned from the inner Solar System. This is the first time that organic materials, which could have provided chemical precursors for the origin of life on Earth, have been found on an asteroid.
The single grain sample was returned to Earth from asteroid Itokawa by JAXA's first Hayabusa mission in 2010. The sample shows that water and organic matter that originate from the asteroid itself have evolved chemically through time.
The research paper suggests that Itokawa has been constantly evolving over billions of years by incorporating water and organic materials from foreign extra-terrestrial material, just like the Earth. In the past, the asteroid will have gone through extreme heating, dehydration and shattering due to catastrophic impact. However, despite this, the asteroid came back together from the shattered fragments and rehydrated itself with water that was delivered via the in fall of dust or carbon-rich meteorites.
Testing instruments for Artemis astronauts
NASA's Artemis program will establish a sustainable presence at the Moon as we prepare to venture on to Mars. To empower the success of these missions, terrestrial engineers must furnish astronauts with the tools they need to make new discoveries on their journeys.
To ensure that these instruments will work in the vacuum of space or on the rocky plains of a distant celestial body, NASA must test them in analog environments that mimic these settings. Examples of these environments include thermal vacuum chambers—where engineers can subject tools to extreme temperatures and pressures—or the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, an enormous swimming pool at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston—where astronauts can practice for spacewalks on the International Space Station.
These testing environments aren't always custom-built to match their counterparts in space. Engineers and scientists also take their instruments into the field, finding places on Earth analogous to areas of scientific interest on the lunar surface or the Red Planet.
Volcanoes might light up the night sky of this exoplanet
Until now, researchers have found no evidence of global tectonic activity on planets outside our solar system. Under the leadership of the University of Bern and the National Center of Competence in Research NCCR PlanetS, scientists have now found that the material inside planet LHS 3844b flows from one hemisphere to the other and could be responsible for numerous volcanic eruptions on one side of the planet.
