July saw more than its fair share of space announcements, including official acceptance of a “vertical” spaceport in Sutherland, North Scotland, and a “horizonal” one getting the nod from Virgin Galactic/Virgin Orbit at Newquay, Cornwall, England. But Cornwall has...
A large dust storm on Mars which began on 30 May, started to diminish power generation on the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity as the sun was blocked out from its solar arrays. This became serious from 8 June when science operations were ordered to be ended. On 10...
While President Trump has formally decided that landing humans back on the Moon should get priority over a longer term Mars landing ambition, it maybe that no past moonwalker will be around by the time the next moonwalk happens. For the world has sadly lost another...
China has launched a new lunar satellite called Queqiao. This is no scientific probe or lunar rover, however. Instead it is a lunar communications relay satellite that will be used to relay data from future lunar exploration missions, including those to the far side...
NASA has issued a Request For Information (RFI) to firms offering designs for lunar landing craft. The 500-1000kg craft designs will initially be for unmanned cargo such as lunar rovers, but will later be evolved into full blown human landing craft to the...
NASA has announced that it is to send its “Mars Helicopter”, a small autonomous rotorcraft, to Mars with the agency’s Mars 2020 rover mission, currently scheduled to launch in July 2020. Started in August 2013 as a technology development project at NASA’s...
