A Soyuz 2-1b/Fregat M rocket sent Russia’s Luna 25 lander, also known as the Luna-Glob, into orbit from Vostochny cosmodrome in far eastern Russia, at 2310 GMT on 10 August. The lander and the Fregat M stage were placed into an initial parking orbit of 280 x 267 km at...
An erroneous command sent to the venerable Voyager 2 spacecraft, now at the outer reaches of the solar system, inadvertently made the spacecraft move so that it tilted its antenna to point two degrees away from Earth. Communications were lost with the spacecraft –...
While Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTR) concepts (e.g. the NERVA project) have been considered for space missions since the 1960s, their lack of suitable application combined with their technical risk has held back their actual use – until now. Seeing that a...
An LVM3-2 (GSLV 3-2) rocket successfully launched the Chandrayaan-3 mission from the Sriharikota (Satish Dhawan Space Centre), India, at 0905 GMT on 14 July. The ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) mission consisted of a propulsion module, lunar lander and lunar...
SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon 9 carrying the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Euclid Telescope from Cape Canaveral, US, at 1512 GMT on 1 July. Euclid, named after a Greek mathematician known for founding the study of geometry, will spend the next month travelling...
Following the success of its Mars probe “Hope”, the UAE Space Agency has announced a plan to launch a probe to the asteroid belt by 2028. Known as the Emirates Mission to the Asteroid Belt (EMA), from 2030 onwards it will study six asteroids on its way to a final one,...
