Copernical Team
Orbit Logic Tackles Autonomous Lunar Exploration with Robotic Swarms
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Orbit Logic has been awarded a Phase I Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) contract sponsored by NASA to develop the Intelligent Navigation, Planning, and Awareness for Swarm Systems (IN-PASS) solution - an autonomous planning architecture supporting collaborative Lunar exploration with teams of humans cooperating with heterogeneous swarms of orbital (satellite) and surface (rover) assets. NASA's OSIRIS-REx to Fly a Farewell Tour of Bennu
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On April 7, NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission will give asteroid Bennu one last glance before saying farewell. Before departing for Earth on May 10, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will perform a final flyby of Bennu - capturing its last images of sample collection site Nightingale to look for transformations on Bennu's surface after the Oct. 20, 2020, sample collection event.
The OSIRIS-REx mission tea Where Should Future Astronauts Land on Mars? Follow the Water
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A new NASA paper provides the most detailed map to date of near-surface water ice on the Red Planet.
So you want to build a Mars base. Where to start? Like any human settlement, it would be best located near accessible water. Not only will water be crucial for life-support supplies, it will be used for everything from agriculture to producing the rocket propellant astronauts will need to r Perseverance in testing helps assure a safe landing on Mars
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After a nearly seven-month journey to Mars, NASA's Perseverance rover is slated to land at the Red Planet's Jezero Crater Feb.18, 2021, a rugged expanse chosen for its scientific research and sample collection possibilities.
But the very features that make the site fascinating to scientists also make it a relatively dangerous place to land - a challenge that has motivated rigorous testing UAE on edge as 'Hope' probe poised to enter Mars orbit
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A tense half-hour on Tuesday will determine the fate of the UAE's "Hope" probe to Mars, as the Arab world's first space mission carries out a tricky manoeuvre to enter the Red Planet's orbit.
If successful, the probe which is designed to reveal the secrets of Martian weather, will become the first of three spacecraft to arrive at the Red Planet this month.
The United Arab Emirates, China New era of Mars exploration begins as craft nears Red Planet
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A new era of Mars exploration will begin Monday with the expected arrival of the United Arab Emirates' Hope spacecraft in the vicinity of the Red Planet - the first of three such arrivals planned for February.
The UAE probe will near Mars late Monday, and the mission will make a final, 27-minute orbital insertion burn, or correction, starting at 10:30 a.m. EST Tuesday.
Hope's ar Tricky terrain: Helping to assure a safe rover landing
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After a nearly seven-month journey to Mars, NASA's Perseverance rover is slated to land at the Red Planet's Jezero Crater Feb.
New technique used to discover how galaxies grow
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For decades, space and ground telescopes have provided us with spectacular images of galaxies. These building blocks of the universe usually contain several million to over a trillion stars and can range in size from a few thousand to several hundred thousand light-years across.
Camera captures the Southern Pinwheel galaxy in glorious detail
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Mars missions from China and UAE are set to go into orbit – here's what they could discover
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How times have changed since the Apollo era. Within the space of a few days, two space missions from China and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), respectively, are set to reach Mars. The UAE's Hope mission will go into orbit around Mars on February 9. The next day, the Chinese Tianwen-1 mission – an orbiter and lander—will swing into orbit, with a predicted landing date sometime in May.
It is a very big moment for both countries. Hope is the first interplanetary mission by an Arab nation ever. And if China succeeds, it will be the first country ever to visit and land on Mars on its first try. The odds are stacked against them with nearly 50% of all Mars missions failing. China already lost a Mars orbiter mission (Yinghuo-1) back in 2011.
But before the missions can start doing science, tense moments await. As they arrive at the planet, they need to trigger a burn of their engines just at the right time to slow the probes down so they can be captured by Mars' gravitational field. Given the large distance from Earth, this needs to be carried out automatically by the probe.
Tianwen-1
If all goes well, the orbiter Tianwen, which means "Questions to Heaven" and the yet unnamed rover will attempt to measure Mars's climate and "ionosphere", a layer of electrically charged particles surrounding the planet.