Illustration of NEO Surveyor, which is a mission designed to discover and characterize most of the potentially hazardous asteroids that are near the Earth. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech Agency officials have completed a rigorous technical and programmatic review, known as Key Decision Point C (KDP-C), and confirmed NASA's Near-Earth Object Surveyor space telescope (NEO Surveyor) – the …
As of Nov. 29, 2022, InSight is generating an average between 290 watt-hours of energy per Martian day, or sol. The tau, or level of dust cover in the atmosphere, was estimated at .95 (typical tau levels outside of dust season range from 0.6-0.7).
NASA has renamed its Global Lyman-alpha Imager of the Dynamic Exosphere, or GLIDE, mission in honor of Dr. George R. Carruthers.
As of Nov. 27, 2022, InSight is generating an average between 285 and 295 watt-hours of energy per Martian day, or sol. The tau, or level of dust cover in the atmosphere, was estimated at .95 (typical tau levels outside of dust season range from 0.6-0.7).
After deploying from the Artemis I Space Launch System rocket, NASA's LunaH-Map spacecraft was powered on and communicating with Earth 5 hours and 33 minutes following launch on Nov. 16. Shortly after deployment, the operations team made first radio contact with the spacecraft and transitioned it out of beacon mode. Over the next 24 hours, …
NASA's Lunar Polar Hydrogen Mapper (LunaH-Map) CubeSat was launched by the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket for the Artemis I mission on Nov. 17. LunaH-Map, developed by Arizona State University and sponsored by NASA's Science Mission Directorate (SMD), will measure the distribution and amount of hydrogen throughout the Moon's South Pole. If successful, the LunaH-Map …
As of Nov. 21, 2022, InSight is generating an average between 300 and 310 watt-hours of energy per Martian day, or sol. The tau, or level of dust cover in the atmosphere, was estimated at 1.33 (typical tau levels outside of dust season range from 0.6-0.7).
NASA has removed its Janus mission from the Psyche mission's 2023 launch manifest after an assessment determined that Janus would not be on the required trajectory to meet its science requirements as a result of Psyche's new launch period. The Janus mission, which was designed to send twin small satellite spacecraft to study two separate …
UPDATE AS OF DECEMBER 15, 2022: The Lucy team updated the spacecraft's attitude controller on Dec. 6, resolving the previously observed vibration interaction between the controller and the solar array structural modes. As previously reported, the vibration was too small to pose a risk and the spacecraft continues to operate safely. The team resumed solar …
NASA announced Wednesday that its Lunar Trailblazer mission is approved to go forward, targeting a launch in mid-2023. NASA confirmed Lunar Trailblazer in 2020 as part of the agency's Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration (SIMPLEx) program to provide an understanding of the form, abundance, and distribution of water on the Moon, as well as …