Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will be sensitive to even lower-mass rogue planets since it will observe from space. It will have wide field of view and sharp vision which will allow us to study the objects it finds in more detail than we can do using only ground-based telescopes. In 2023, researchers estimate it …
Dwarf planets Eris and Makemake (out by Pluto) have surfaces bearing methane ice of unknown origin. This ice can provide important insights into the origin and evolution of volatiles in the outer solar system. We probably need to send new probes to the Dwarf planets to conclusively determine if liquid oceans have microbial life. Because …
Space startup Xplore Solar Sail spacecraft design would go seven times faster than the Voyager spacecraft to enable vastly improved exploration of the solar system. The initial design would be to get to 5AU/year speeds but we need to improve it to 40 AU/year speeds. The goal would be to reach 550-650 AU where the …
SpaceX has scheduled a live stream for March 14, 2024 for the third launch orbital test flight of the SpaceX Starship. They have changed the flight plan from previous orbital launches. They will try to make a controlled landing in the Indian Ocean. They will restart engines in orbit and open the payload bay doors. …
The Solar system is bigger than NASA thought. There are a lot of huge objects at the edge of the solar system that we have not seen but can indirectly estimate. When astronomers say Kuiper Belt Object think larger asteroid belt beyond Neptune. This larger belt includes Pluto and its moon and they are far …
Intuitive Machines IM-1, Odysseus, completed its scheduled 408-second main engine lunar orbit insertion burn and is currently in a 92 km circular lunar orbit. Initial data indicates the 800 m/s burn was completed within 2 m/s accuracy. After traveling over 1,000,000 km, Odysseus is now closer to the Moon than the end-to-end distance driving across …
NASA wants four volunteers second of three planned ground-based missions called CHAPEA (Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog) is scheduled to kick off in spring 2025. Each CHAPEA mission involves a four-person volunteer crew living and working inside a 1,700-square-foot, 3D-printed habitat based at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The habitat, called the Mars …
Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lunar lander had a good launch today on the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The NASA payloads aboard the lander aim to help us learn more about terrain and communications near the lunar South Pole. Brian WangBrian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per …
Intuitive Machines will launch the IM-1 mission Nova-C class lunar lander on a SpaceX Falcon 9. The Intuitive Machines IM-1 mission will be the Company’s first attempted lunar landing as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (“CLPS”) initiative, a key part of NASA’s Artemis lunar exploration efforts. The Intuitive Machines 1 (IM-1, TO2-IM) mission …
In late 2023, NASA tested a new hybrid laser/radio antenna to downlink data from 20 million miles (32 million kilometers) away at a rate of 15.63 megabits per second – about 40 times faster than radio frequency communications at that distance. On Jan. 1, 2024, the antenna downlinked a team photograph that had been uploaded …
Tomorrow should be the first launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 of the Grumman Cygnus cargo spacecraft. It delivers about 3000 kilograms of payload. Cygnus is an expendable American cargo spacecraft developed by Orbital Sciences Corporation but manufactured and launched by Northrop Grumman Space Systems as part of NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) program. It …