Copernical Team
America has sent five rovers to Mars -- when will humans follow?
With its impeccable landing on Thursday, NASA's Perseverance became the fifth rover to reach Mars - so when can we finally expect the long-held goal of a crewed expedition to materialize?
NASA's current Artemis program is billed as a "Moon to Mars" mission, and acting administrator Steve Jurczyk has reiterated his aspiration of "the mid-to-end of the 2030s" for American boots on the Red Pl NASA's Perseverance Rover Sends Sneak Peek of Mars Landing
Less than a day after NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover successfully landed on the surface of Mars, engineers and scientists at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California were hard at work, awaiting the next transmissions from Perseverance.
As data gradually came in, relayed by several spacecraft orbiting the Red Planet, the Perseverance team were relieved to see the r NASA's Perseverance rover beams back spectacular new images
NASA on Friday released stunning new photographs from Perseverance, including one of the rover being gently lowered to the surface of Mars by a set of cables, the first time such a view has been captured.
The high-resolution still was extracted from a video taken by the descent stage of the spacecraft that had transported the rover from Earth.
At that moment, the descent stage was using Northrop Grumman ready for next ISS supply run
Northrop Grumman is set to launch the company's 15th resupply mission (NG-15) to the International Space Station under NASA's Commercial Resupply Service-2 contract. The NG-15 mission's Cygnus spacecraft will launch aboard the company's Antares rocket with nearly 8,000 pounds of scientific research, supplies and hardware for the crew aboard the station.
Liftoff of the Antares rocket is sch NASA, Boeing update Starliner orbital flight test date
NASA and Boeing now are targeting no earlier than Friday, April 2, for launch of the agency's Boeing Orbital Flight Test-2 to the International Space Station.
As preparations continue for the second uncrewed flight test, teams remain focused on the safety and quality of the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft and successful launch of the end-to-end test to prove the system is ready to begin flyin America has sent five rovers to Mars—when will humans follow?
With its impeccable landing on Thursday, NASA's Perseverance became the fifth rover to reach Mars—so when can we finally expect the long-held goal of a crewed expedition to materialize?
NASA's current Artemis program is billed as a "Moon to Mars" mission, and acting administrator Steve Jurczyk has reiterated his aspiration of "the mid-to-end of the 2030s" for American boots on the Red Planet.
But while the trip is technologically almost within grasp, experts say it's probably still decades out because of funding uncertainties.
Mars landing team 'awestruck' by photo of descending rover
The world got its first close-up look at a Mars landing on Friday, as NASA released a stunning picture of its newest rover being lowered onto the dusty red surface.
The photo was released less than 24 hours after the Perseverance rover successfully touched down near an ancient river delta, where it will search for signs of ancient life and set aside the most promising rock samples for return to Earth in a decade.
NASA equipped the spacecraft with a record 25 cameras and two microphones, many of which were turned on during Thursday's descent.
The rover is shown in extraordinary detail just 6 1/2 feet (2 meters) off the ground, being lowered by cables attached to an overhead sky crane, the red dust kicked up by rocket engines.
Space Force sounds like a joke thanks to pop culture—that could be a problem for an important military branch
The U.S. Space Force has a serious role to play in the modern world. Its stated mission is to train and equip personnel to defend U.S. interests in space. Given the increasing military and economic importance of space, the USSF is likely to grow in importance.
But a quick internet search shows that for most people, the Space Force is more a meme than a military branch. It has been the subject of jokes on "Saturday Night Live," and Netflix was working on a comedy show before the service was officially formed.
'Perseverance will get you anywhere': After 300-million-mile journey, NASA's Mars rover shares Twitter updates
"I'm safe on Mars" isn't a tweet you see every day.
It's the update provided by the Twitter account for NASA's Perseverance rover (@NASAPersevere) after it successfully landed Thursday on the Red Planet. The tweet went out to a rapidly-growing audience of more than 1.2 million followers, with promises of more to come in the future.
The tweet, which gathered more than 480,000 likes as of Thursday night, punctuated a 300-million-mile voyage and coincided with the rover's 3:55 p.m. EST landing. "Perseverance will get you anywhere," indeed.
Researchers developing drugs to enable longer space missions
The University of Adelaide is sending pills to the International Space Station (ISS) to determine if it will be possible to produce medicine in space to enable longer-term space missions.
Scheduled to launch from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on Sunday 21 February, the pills will contain Ibuprofen and vitamin C as active ingredients, in addition to excipients that can be found on the moon's surface. These include silica, magnesium silicate (talcum) and calcium phosphate.
University of Adelaide professor and research director for Andy Thomas Centre for Space Resources Volker Hessel said the project was making the first step towards "autonomous on-board pharmaceutical manufacturing."
The 60 pills will be packaged in blister packs and will be placed outside the ISS for six months to discover how exposure to microgravity and space radiation affects the stability of pharmaceutical tablet formulations.
"Radiation protection was incorporated into the design of the pills," Hessel said.
"By altering the interaction between the ingredients and the drug we will be able to examine how these variations affect their stability."
Space technology companies Alpha Space and Space Tango have partnered with the University of Adelaide to send the pills to space.
