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Joylette Hylick, left, and Katherine Moore, daughters of Katherine Johnson, accept the Congressional Gold Medal on behalf of Katherine Johnson from Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) during a ceremony recognizing NASA’s Hidden Figures, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024.

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the spiral galaxy IC 4709 located around 240 million light-years away in the southern constellation Telescopium. Hubble beautifully captures its faint halo and swirling disk filled with stars and dust bands.

"I would say family and part of that 'first-gen experience' [shaped me]...It shaped me to be a hard worker and to aspire to large things because not only was it my goal at this point, but it was also my parents' aspiration." – Zaida Hernandez, Engineer, Lunar Architecture Team, NASA's Johnson Space Center

An astronaut aboard the International Space Station shot this photo of peak fall colors around Ottawa, the capital of Canada. West of downtown Ottawa lies Gatineau Park, where sugar maple leaves turn orange-red and hickories turn golden-bronze during the season, known regionally as “the Fall Rhapsody.”

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Sep 13, 2024
In the foreword to Astropolitics 3.0: Reality Check, I have the privilege of introducing a work that not only maps the intricate pathways of space exploration but also deciphers the power plays shaping our future in outer space. Having journeyed alongside Frank through numerous space ventures in the 2000s, I've witnessed firsthand his unique ability to navigate this complex arena. Ou

Washington (AFP) Sept 12, 2024
A pioneering private crew made history Thursday by performing the first commercial spacewalk, with NASA hailing it as "a giant leap forward" for the space industry. The SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission, led by fintech billionaire Jared Isaacman, launched Tuesday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, journeying deeper into the cosmos than any humans in half a century, since the Apollo era.

Sydney, Australia (SPX) Sep 12, 2024
On Sept 5, Asteroid 2024 RW1 entered Earth's atmosphere, burning up about 25 kilometers above the Philippines. This event, coinciding with China's announcement of a new asteroid defense initiative, highlighted both the necessity and feasibility of such a plan. While the odds of an asteroid causing significant damage are relatively low - most disintegrate upon entering the atmosphere - the

Sydney, Australia (SPX) Sep 12, 2024
A newly-built high-altitude simulation test stand in Northwest China's Shaanxi province has successfully completed its test run, according to a report from China Space News on Wednesday. The test stand, designed to simulate the operating conditions for the main deceleration engine of China's manned lunar landing spacecraft, is seen as a significant achievement in the country's ongoing lunar expl

Elche, Spain (SPX) Sep 12, 2024
Primary, secondary, and vocational schools now have the chance to launch their projects into space through PLD Space's new SPARK Program. This initiative offers students, teachers, and researchers the opportunity to send experiments into space on the first two flights of the MIURA 5 rocket, planned for late 2025 and early 2026 - at no cost to participating institutions. The SPARK Program i

London, UK (SPX) Sep 12, 2024
Astroscale UK, the British arm of Astroscale Holdings Inc., has been awarded a GBP 1.95 million contract by the UK Space Agency to further develop its Cleaning Outer Space Mission through Innovative Capture (COSMIC) spacecraft. The COSMIC mission aims to remove two inactive UK satellites from orbit as part of a national Active Debris Removal (ADR) effort. This phase of the mission will con

Columbus OH (SPX) Sep 12, 2024
Mold can survive the harshest of environments, so to stop harmful spores from growing on future space stations, a new study suggests a novel way to prevent its spread. Researchers created a predictive approach for modeling unintended microbial growth in critical spaces and applied it to life on the International Space Station. An analysis of dust samples obtained from the space stati

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Sep 11, 2024
BlackSky Technology Inc. (NYSE: BKSY) has been chosen by NASA to supply high-frequency, time-diverse satellite imaging data for Earth observation projects under NASA's Commercial Smallsat Data Acquisition Program (CSDAP). This contract, which could reach a total value of $476 million, will run through November 2028 for participating contractors. "Adding BlackSky's space-based intelligence

Wurzburg, Germany (SPX) Sep 12, 2024
An enormous canyon stretches across Mars: Valles Marineris is 3,000 kilometres long, 600 kilometres wide and on average eight kilometres deep. Its Latin name goes back to the Mars orbiter "Mariner", which discovered the valley in the early 1970s. Since 2012, this largest known canyon in the solar system has received special attention from the German Space Agency at the German Aerospace Cen

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Sep 12, 2024
NASA's Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft has successfully finished the rigorous series of environmental tests designed to ensure it can withstand the challenges of launch and space. With these tests complete, the spacecraft team at Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, is now conducting software tests simulating key phases of the mission, including launch, orbital maneuvers, and its science o

Washington DC (UPI) Sep 12, 2024
NASA said Thursday its Space Communication and Navigation program is taking the lead on an effort to establish a Coordinated Lunar Time standard as humans prepare to return to the moon. The program, also known as SCaN, will coordinate with various stakeholders on a timekeeping effort to "enable a future lunar ecosystem" that could also be extended to Mars and other locations in solar sy

Boston MA (SPX) Sep 11, 2024
Typically, electrons are free agents that can move through most metals in any direction. When they encounter an obstacle, the charged particles experience friction and scatter randomly like colliding billiard balls. But in certain exotic materials, electrons can appear to flow with single-minded purpose. In these materials, electrons may become locked to the material's edge and flow in one

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Sep 12, 2024
MDA Space Ltd. (TSX: MDA), a key partner in global space missions, has been awarded a contract by SWISSto12 to supply antenna systems for three HummingSat geostationary orbit (GEO) satellites. These satellites are part of the Inmarsat-8 program, which will deliver vital safety services and enhance emergency tracking capabilities. Under this contract, MDA Space will design and build L-Band

Washington DC (UPI) Sep 11, 2024
An American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts successfully launched Wednesday for a six-month mission to the International Space Station and the transition from one mission crew to another. Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner departed Earth in a live-streamed event with NASA astronaut Don Pettit on time at 12:23 p.m. EDT aboard the Russian Soyuz spacecraft atop a Soy

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Sep 12, 2024
NASA's contributions to technological innovation and its ability to inspire future STEM leaders are at risk due to critical issues related to infrastructure, budgetary mismatches, and a focus on short-term goals, according to a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Commissioned by Congress as part of the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, the report highlight

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Sols 4304-4006: 12 Years, 42 Drill Holes, and Now… 1 Million ChemCam Shots! In celebration of ChemCam’s milestone, here is a stunning image from its remote micro imager, showing details in the landscape far away. This image was taken by Chemistry & Camera (ChemCam) onboard NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 4302 — Martian day 4,302 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — on Sept. 12, 2024, at 09:20:51 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech

Earth planning date: Friday, Sept. 13, 2024

Today, I need to talk about ChemCam, our laser and imaging instrument on the top of Curiosity’s mast. It one of the instruments in the “head” that gives Curiosity that cute look as if it were looking around tilting its head down to the rocks at the rover’s wheels. On Monday, 19th August the ChemCam team at CNES in France planned the 1 millionth shot and Curiosity executed it on the target Royce Lake on sol 4281 on Mars. Even as an Earth scientist used to really big numbers, this is a huge number that took me a while to fully comprehend. 1 000 000 shots! Congratulations, ChemCam, our champion for getting chemistry from a distance – and high-resolution images, too. If you are now curious how Curiosity’s ChemCam instrument works, here is the NASA fact sheet. And, of course, the team is celebrating, which is expressed by those two press releases, one from CNES in France and one from Los Alamos National Laboratory, the two institutions who collaborated to develop and build ChemCam and are now running the instrument for over 12 years! And the PI, Dr Nina Lanza from Los Alamos informs me that the first milestone – 10000 shots was reached as early as Sol 42, which was the sol the DAN instrument used its active mode for the first time. But before I am getting melancholic, let’s talk about today’s plan!

The drive ended fairly high up in the terrain, and that means we see a lot of the interesting features in the channel and generally around us. So, we are on a spot a human hiker would probably put the backpack down, take the water bottle out and sit down with a snack to enjoy the view from a nice high point in the landscape. Well, no such pleasures for Curiosity – and I am pretty sure sugar, which we humans love so much, wouldn’t be appreciated by rover gears anyway. So, let’s just take in the views! And that keeps Mastcam busy taking full advantage of our current vantage point. We have a terrain with lots of variety in front of us, blocks, boulders, flatter areas and the walls are layered, beautiful geology. Overall there are 11 Mastcam observations in the plan adding up to just about 100 individual frames, not counting those taken in the context of atmospheric observations, which are of course also in the plan. The biggest mosaics are on the targets “Western Deposit,” “Balloon Dome,” and “Coral Meadow.” Some smaller documentation images are on the targets “Wales Lake,” “Gnat Meadow,” and “Pig Chute.”

ChemCam didn’t have long to dwell on its milestone, as it’s busy again today. Of course, it will join Mastcam in taking advantage of our vantage point, taking three remote micro imager images on the landscape around us. LIBS chemistry investigations are targeting “Wales Lake,” “Gnat Meadow,” and “Pig Chute.” APXS is investigating two targets, “College Rock” and “Wales Lake,” which will also come with MAHLI documentation. With all those investigations together, we’ll be able to document the chemistry of many targets around us. There is such a rich variety of dark and light toned rocks, and with so much variety everywhere, it’s hard to choose and the team is excited about the three targeted sols … and planning over 4 hours of science over the weekend!

The next drive is planned to go to an area where there is a step in the landscape. Geologists love those steps as they give insights into the layers below the immediate surface. If you have read the word ‘outcrop’ here, then that’s what that means: access to below the surface. But there are also other interesting features in the area, hence we will certainly have an interesting workspace to look at! But getting there will not be easy as the terrain is very complex, so we cannot do it in just one drive. I think there is a rule of thumb here: the more excited the geo-team gets, the more skills our drivers need. Geologists just love rocks, but of course, no one likes driving offroad in a really rocky terrain – no roads on Mars. And right now, our excellent engineers have an extra complication to think about: they need to take extra care where and how to park so Curiosity can actually communicate with Earth. Why? Well, we are in a canyon, and those of you liking to hike, know what canyons mean for cell phone signals… yes, there isn’t much coverage, and that’s the same for Curiosity’s antenna. This new NASA video has more information and insights into the planning room, too! So, we’ll drive halfway to where we want to be but I am sure there will be interesting targets in the new workspace, the area is just so, so complex, fascinating and rich!

And that’s after Mars for you, after 12 years, 42 drill holes, and now 1 Million ChemCam shots. Go Curiosity go!!!

Written by Susanne Schwenzer, Planetary Geologist at The Open University

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Sep 13, 2024

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