In what will both please and disappoint the leadership of NASA, US Congress has voted to give NASA US$23.3 billion in funding for the fiscal Year 2021 as part of its “Omnibus spending bill”. The budget deal represents an increase of US$642 million over...
The last stage of the Chinese Chang’e 5 mission – the attempt to return lunar samples safely to Earth – has been successfully accomplished. After a “skip” trajectory during re-entry, the sample return vessel landed in Inner Mongolia at around 1730 GMT on 16 December....
NASA has formally announced the astronauts that will participate on the lunar missions as part of Project Artemis. The cadre of 18 is split evenly between men and women. Some have space experience and some do not: Joseph Acaba. Born 1967, Anaheim, California....
The Japanese Hayabusa-2 mission gave JAXA a laudable success when it returned to Earth with its asteroid samples safely on board the return capsule on 5 December. Having made trajectory corrections, the Hayabusa-2 spacecraft entered the Earth’s gravitational field at...
While it plans to get its own lunar samples via its Artemis human lunar programme, in the meantime NASA has selected four companies to collect some and transfer ownership of these samples to the agency. The companies selected are: Lunar Outpost of Golden, Colorado;...
While China has come under international criticism for some of its policies, it still retains international admiration for its space exploits. The latest was the launch of its Chang’e 5 lunar sample return mission. The Chang’e 5 lunar orbiter/lander/sample return...
