Copernical Team
NASA aims to wow public with landing video, images
NASA has started intense planning to capture public attention with high-definition video, photos and possible live streaming from the moon during upcoming Artemis missions.
Grainy delayed footage - sometimes only in black and white - was a hallmark of the first Apollo moon landing in 1969. But even that captured 650 million viewers around the globe.
Artemis moon missions will f Sensors collect crucial data on Mars landings with arrival of Perseverance
"Tango delta. Touchdown confirmed. Perseverance safely on the surface of Mars, ready to begin seeking the signs of past life." For more than six years, the Mars Entry, Descent, and Landing Instrumentation 2 (MEDLI2) team waited to hear these words.
NASA's Perseverance rover successfully landed Feb. 18, 2021, beginning its robotic exploration of the Red Planet. MEDLI2 was one of the crucial InSight detects two sizable quakes on Mars
NASA's InSight lander has detected two strong, clear quakes originating in a location of Mars called Cerberus Fossae - the same place where two strong quakes were seen earlier in the mission. The new quakes have magnitudes of 3.3 and 3.1; the previous quakes were magnitude 3.6 and 3.5. InSight has recorded over 500 quakes to date, but because of their clear signals, these are four of the best qu Gateway's propulsion system passes first test
The thruster system that will propel NASA's Gateway around the Moon was recently fired up for the first of many ground tests to ensure the Power and Propulsion Element (PPE) is ready for flight.
NASA, along with Maxar Technologies and Busek Co., successfully completed a test of the 6-kilowatt (kW) solar electric propulsion (SEP) subsystem destined for the PPE.
The hot fire tests were OSIRIS-REx's set for final observation run before heading to Earth
NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission is on the brink of discovering the extent of the mess it made on asteroid Bennu's surface during last fall's sample collection event. On Apr. 7, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will get one last close encounter with Bennu as it performs a final flyover to capture images of the asteroid's surface. While performing the flyover, the spacecraft will observe Bennu from a distance Rover drops off Mars Helicopter Ingenuity for first flight on Mars
Within a few days, Ingenuity will be on the surface of Mars. Until now it has been connected to the Perseverance rover, which allowed Ingenuity to charge its battery as well as use a thermostat-controlled heater powered by the rover.
This heater keeps the interior at about 45 degrees F through the bitter cold of the Martian night, where temperatures can drop to as low as -130F. That comfor Piece of SpaceX rocket debris lands at Washington state farm
Getting CubeSats moving: M-Argo will be first to traverse interplanetary space under its own power
ESA's M-Argo mission will be the first CubeSat to traverse interplanetary space under its own power. Due to launch in 2024-5, the suitcase-sized spacecraft will travel to a near-Earth asteroid, up to 150 million km away.
CubeSats are small, cheap satellites assembled from standardized parts in 10 cm boxes—M-Argo is a 12-unit CubeSat. Originally intended for educational purposes and technology testing, CubeSats have matured rapidly, and are becoming increasingly attractive to intuitional and commercial users for applications including Earth observation, telecommunications and even exploration.
Today hundreds of CubeSats are launched each year, while ESA employs them for early in-orbit demonstration of advanced technologies.
While CubeSats offer increasingly capable payload performance, their natural limits of size, mass and power typically preclude the inclusion of conventional spacecraft propulsion systems. At the same time, such propulsion capabilities are crucial to enable mobility and to enhance the potential of CubeSats, which have started to utilize miniaturized chemical and electric propulsion. This is the subject of a dedicated ESA workshop on Propulsion4CubeSats on 28-29 Apri. ESA's annual CubeSat Industry Days will follow in June.
Week in images: 29 March - 02 April 2021
Week in images: 29 March - 02 April 2021
Discover our week through the lens
Earth from Space: Easter egg hunt
With Easter right around the corner, we take a look at four egg-shaped buildings visible from space as captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.