Producing rapid and accurate images on missions to the Moon, Mars and other terrestrial destinations is crucial for a safe descent and landing. A NASA project called Safe and Precise Landing—Integrated Capabilities Evolution, or SPLICE, includes a key element that will help ensure a clearer touchdown site.

The SPLICE team recently performed a dynamic test of the hazard detection lidar (HDL) engineering development unit, a prototype specifically built for testing, at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. HDL—an element of SPLICE—is a laser-based 3D imaging system that can quickly and accurately scan a planetary surface to create a map of the landing field. It's designed to help a mission avoid hazardous obstacles and land in a safe area.

The Marshall Grazing Incidence X-ray Spectrometer, or MaGIXS, mission is about to take flight. The launch window opens at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico on July 30.

Led by Dr. Amy Winebarger at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, MaGIXS will fly aboard a sounding rocket, a launch vehicle that lifts scientific instruments above Earth's atmosphere for a few minutes in space before falling back to Earth for recovery.

Russia's long-delayed lab module successfully docked with the International Space Station on Thursday, eight days after it was launched from the Russian space launch facility in Baikonur, Kazakhstan.

The 20-metric-ton (22-ton) Nauka module, also called the Multipurpose Laboratory Module, docked with the orbiting outpost after a long journey and a series of maneuvers.

The launch of Nauka, which is intended to provide more room for scientific experiments and space for the crew, had been repeatedly delayed because of technical problems. It was initially scheduled to go up in 2007.

In 2013, experts found contamination in its fuel system, resulting in a long and costly replacement. Other Nauka systems also underwent modernization or repairs.

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Can we find alien technology? That is the ambitious goal of the Galileo Project, launched this week by Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb with substantial private financial backing.

The project is far from the first attempt to detect signs of civilisations beyond Earth. Loeb has been criticized in the past for his dismissive approach to previous efforts to find extraterrestrial life and his argument that an alien artifact passed through our solar system in 2017.

So why do Loeb and his collaborators think they have a chance of finding something where others have failed? There are three triggers that suggest they might.

Exoplanets, "Oumuamua, and UFOs

First, years of painstaking observations have shown that many stars host Earth-like planets. There is a real chance these "exoplanets" might be home to alien civilisations.

Second, five years ago, an interstellar visitor, dubbed "Oumuamua, tumbled though our solar system. It was a skinny object about 400 meters long, and we know from its speed and trajectory that it arrived from outside our solar system. It was the first time we had ever seen an interstellar object enter our neighborhood.