Surviving the threat of cancellation following discovery of significant problems with one of its main instruments, NASA’s InSight Mars mission, which had been scheduled to launch this month, has new life, and a new launch date. NASA Press Release: NASA Targets May 2018 Launch of Mars InSight Mission NASA’s Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy […]
A key element of NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission, or ARM, is being pushed back one year. According to reports from a meeting of the NASA Advisory Council’s human exploration and operations committee which took place last week, ARM’s program director Michele Gates said: “Under the new schedule, the ARM robotic mission would launch in December […]
The FAA held a Commercial Space Launch conference in Washington, D.C. last week, during which a panel discussion on the second day provided a good deal of insight into how some players in the aerospace industry really regard the prospects for for future space stations beyond ISS. Spacepolicyonline has the complete breakdown, but here are […]
On February 3rd, Congress held another in an a seemingly endless line of hearings to discus NASA’s human space flight program. As usual, nothing was decided other than the fact that everyone seemed to agree with the assertion that what NASA is saying is a plan, is not one at all, and that some sort […]
A pair of Elon Musk appearances conducted on opposite sides of the planet over the last few days have provided quite a bit of insight to the SpaceX founder’s short and long term plans, both for the company as well as for himself. As is so often the case, the long term vision is enthralling, […]
Two NASA reports released late this week bring to mind the old adage “we don’t know what we don’t know.” The first concerns the explosion of an Orbital Sciences, (now Orbital ATK ) Antares booster carrying a Cygnus cargo ship to the International Space Station on October 28th 2014. One year later, a NASA Independent […]
NASA Press Release: Oct. 8, 2015 15-206 NASA Releases Plan Outlining Next Steps in the Journey to Mars NASA is leading our nation and the world on a journey to Mars, and Thursday the agency released a detailed outline of that plan in its report, “NASA’s Journey to Mars: Pioneering Next Steps in Space Exploration.” […]
NASA held a press conference this morning to announce a major discovery regarding the presence of liquid water flowing on the surface of Mars “under certain conditions.” Here is the complete press release from NASA.gov: “New findings from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) provide the strongest evidence yet that liquid water flows intermittently on present-day […]
India is celebrating the one year anniversary of the arrival of its Mars Orbiter Mission, MOM, in orbit at the Red Planet today. To mark the event, the Indian Space Research Organization has released an extensive Mars Atlas (pdf) available for download. From ISRO: “The images from MCC have provided unique information about Mars at […]
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