Washington DC (UPI) Apr 17, 2021
NASA has announced that it is targeting Monday for the first flight of the Ingenuity Mars helicopter. A press release from the agency said the helicopter is now scheduled to attempt to fly about 3:30 a.m. EDT, and that data from the flight will return to Earth a few hours after the autonomous flight. NASA's Mars rover, Perseverance, carried the tiny, four-pound helicopter under i

Washington DC (UPI) Apr 17, 2021
NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikiov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov landed on Earth on Saturday after a half-year International Space Station mission. They departed the station in their Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft at 9:34 p.m. EDT Friday and landed safely under parachutes at 12:55 a.m. EDT Saturday in Kazakhstan after spending 185 days in space, NASA announced.

Washington (AFP) April 17, 2021
NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter could make its first flight over the Red Planet as soon as Monday, the US space agency reported, following a delay of more than a week due to a possible technical issue. The mini-helicopter's trip will mark the first-ever powered, controlled flight on another planet, and will help NASA reap invaluable data about the conditions on Mars. "NASA is targeting

Image: Crew Dragon traditions

Laurel MD (SPX) Apr 16, 2021
In the weeks following its launch in early 2006, when NASA's New Horizons was still close to home, it took just minutes to transmit a command to the spacecraft, and hear back that the onboard computer received and was ready to carry out the instructions. As New Horizons crossed the solar system, and its distance from Earth jumped from millions to billions of miles, that time between contac

Pasadena CA (JPL) Apr 16, 2021
April 16, on the 154th anniversary of Wilbur Wright's birth, the Ingenuity flight team received information that the helicopter was able to complete a rapid spin test. The completion of the full-speed spin is an important milestone on the path to flight as the team continues to work on the command sequence issue identified on Sol 49 (April 9). How did we get to this milestone? As with any

Beijing (XNA) Apr 16, 2021
China has completed an upgrade of the ground system for its first-generation relay satellite, Tianlian I, according to the Beijing Space Information Transmission Center on Friday. The system upgrade marks a major advance for China in the space-based tracking, telemetry and control (TT&C) sector, said the center. The four-year upgrade was successfully completed following maintenance d

Washington DC (UPI) Apr 16, 2021
NASA plans to launch its next mission to Mars in 2026 to pick up rock samples being collected over the next two years and collaborate on their return to Earth by 2031, officials said. The Mars rover Perseverance, which landed on the planet Feb. 18, will drill rock samples in an ancient river delta. Such a location, once flowing with water, is the best spot to look for signs of past life

Washington DC (UPI) Apr 16, 2021
Elon Musk's SpaceX has won a $2.9 billion contract to develop the company's Starship rocket as a lunar lander to carry astronauts on Artemis moon missions, NASA announced Friday. In selecting only SpaceX for the lunar program, NASA ended consideration of Musk's rival, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his Blue Origin space company, and a third proposal by Huntsville, Ala.-based Dynetics.

Tucson AZ (SPX) Apr 16, 2021
Like boot prints on the Moon, NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft left its mark on asteroid Bennu. Now, new images - taken during the spacecraft's final fly-over on April 7 - reveal the aftermath of its historic encounter with the asteroid. The spacecraft flew within 2.3 miles (3.7 km) of the asteroid - the closest it has been since the Touch-and-Go, or TAG, sample collection event on Oct. 20, 20