Great Space

2022-11-30 23:43:44 A simple plan.

NASA and the European Space Agency are developing a plan to bring interplanetary rock samples — already collected by the Perseverance rover — from Mars back to Earth by 2033.Watch as Lizzie Philip explains the plan, as it exists so far, for the Mars Sample Return Mission. Open / Comment

2022-11-28 23:49:26 How a tiny briefcase-sized spacecraft will prospect for water on the Moon
Lunar Flashlight is hitching a ride on a SpaceX rocket sending two other missions to the Moon.

The Artemis I mission isn’t the only lunar mission happening this month. On Wednesday, November 30th, a SpaceX Falcon 9 is expected to launch a commercial Japanese lander called Hakuto-R to the Moon, carrying the United Arab Emirates Rashid rover. And there will also be an extra payload tucked inside the rocket: a tiny orbiter called Lunar Flashlight.

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2022-11-24 22:05:30 JWST peers into the atmosphere of an exoplanet bombarded by stellar radiation.

Humanity’s latest space telescope is giving us a clearer picture of planets far outside our solar system.

This week, astronomers announced that they’d found evidence of chemical reactions in the atmosphere of an exoplanet 700 light years away from Earth. Researchers using the James Webb Space Telescope created a detailed chemical portrait of the scorching gases swirling around exoplanet WASP-39b. This “hot Saturn” planet orbits extremely close to its host star, meaning it has high temperatures of up to 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit or 900 degrees Celsius. It is also puffy, with around one quarter the mass of Jupiter but 1.3 times its size.

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2022-11-22 17:34:14 NASA 'giddy' over amazing moon views from Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft
"The results were eye-watering."

NASA officials say Artemis 1 mission teams are "giddy" after witnessing how well their Orion spacecraft has been performing so far on its way towards lunar orbit.

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2022-11-21 22:43:43 NASA's Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft aces close moon flyby in crucial engine burn

Orion zoomed just 80 miles (130 kilometers) above the lunar surface Monday (Nov. 21) at 7:44 a.m. ET. and completed an engine burn needed to continue its historic mission. NASA's Artemis 1 mission fired its engines close to the moon today (Nov. 21), finishing the maneuver successfully out of communication with Earth.

Artemis 1's uncrewed Orion spacecraft has been cruising toward the moon since Wednesday morning (Nov. 16), when it launched atop NASA's gigantic Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.

The burn "sent Orion close enough to the lunar surface to leverage the moon's gravitational force, and swing the spacecraft once around the moon toward entry into a distant retrograde orbit," NASA's Sandra Jones said during an Artemis 1 livestream Monday (Nov. 21) at 8:28 a.m. EST, nearly an hour after the burn took place.

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2022-11-18 22:51:00 LightSail 2 just met its fiery end, but solar sailing is just getting started

The latest LightSail mission gave us a glimpse into the future of solar sailing.
After three years in space, the Planetary Society’s LightSail 2 mission burned up in the atmosphere on Thursday, November 17th. During its mission, the crowdfunded spacecraft made 18,000 orbits of the planet using its giant reflective sail and demonstrated that controlled solar sailing is possible.

LightSail may now be over, but it has opened the door to the use of solar sailing in space exploration. “It doesn’t fit every situation, but now it gives another arrow in the quiver of options for types of propulsion you can use,” said Bruce Betts, Chief Scientist and LightSail program manager.

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2022-11-16 15:42:24 NASA’s Artemis 1 mission is finally headed towards the Moon

The Space Launch System sent the Orion spacecraft on its way. It’s a brand new era for the US government’s space program.
With a roar that lit up the night sky, NASA sent its colossal next-generation rocket soaring into space for the first time on Wednesday. The Space Launch System rocket, or SLS, took off at 1:47AM ET from Cape Canaveral, Florida, signaling the start of a bold new era for the US government’s space program. It also marks a major success for NASA’s Artemis program to return to the Moon, which has been plagued by years of delays, development mishaps, and billions of dollars in budget overruns. During the past few months both hurricanes and technical difficulties caused launch delays — including two scrubs. Then engineers managed to fix both an intermittent hydrogen leak and a “bad ethernet switch” in the hours just before launch.

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2022-11-13 14:41:34 Why NASA is launching a new polar satellite

JPSS-2 will join other satellites in a polar orbit, keeping track of weather conditions around the world. A new Earth observation satellite will launch into space, where it will help scientists forecast the weather and keep an eye on increasingly common extreme weather events. The satellite, called Joint Polar Satellite System-2 (JPSS-2), is part of a global observation system and a product of a partnership between NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

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2022-11-10 21:51:21 ​​Powerful JPSS-2 weather satellite launches with Mars heat shield test on final Atlas V flight from West Coast

Thursday morning's (Nov. 10) liftoff also lofted a heat-shield demonstrator that could help land heavy payloads on Mars down the road.

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2022-11-08 17:53:55 ​​Tropical storm Nicole swirls above the Caribbean

Storm Nicole swirls above the Caribbean as it approaches Florida, forcing NASA to consider emergency scenarios for its upcoming Artemis 1 test flight to the moon.
The storm, seen in this video sequence captured by the GOES-17 satellite of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), formed early on Monday (Nov. 7) morning.

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