Category: Exploration

  • Week in Space 12/31-1/5

    As we start 2019 we are launching a new weekly summary of the activities that happened or relate to space. New Horizons flies by Ultima Thule On New Years eve the New Horizons spacecraft flew past the asteroid 2014-MU69 which is being referred to as Ultima Thule. The asteroid which is 4+ billion miles away…

  • ULA launches Mars InSight

    United Launch Alliance (ULA) successfully launched NASA’s Mars InSight lander today aboard their Atlas V rocket in the 401 configuration from Space Launch Complex-3 at Vandenberg Air Force Base. Following a smooth countdown, the rocket lifted off at 7:05 AM EDT and approximately 94 minutes later the spacecraft separated from the upper stage to begin its six-month…

  • Technological Breakthroughs needed to visit other Solar Systems

    The more we look into the Universe the more obvious it becomes that our Solar System and potentially our own Earth is not as unique as we once thought.  Just this week NASA released news about Kepler-452b which is very similar to Earth both in size, its parent Star and its distance from the star. Today we are…

  • New Horizons Phones Home

    Following this mornings flyby of Pluto the New Horizons spacecraft has phoned home. And tomorrow morning it will starting returning the high priority data from its numerous observations. The spacecraft which was launched in Jan, 2006 has traveled more than 3.2 billion miles to reach the Pluto system, during the 9.5 years of travel most of…

  • And now we wait #PlutoFlyby

    New Horizons has completed its closest approach to Pluto with a historic flyby at 7:50am EDT today, however we will not hear back from the spacecraft for another 12 hours as it will now turn around and continue observations as it moves away from the system, this time with our Sun in the background. The…

  • T-1 days until #PlutoFlyby

    By this time tomorrow NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will be zooming past the Dwarf Plant Pluto capturing details of the planet from just 12,500 km (7,800 mi) away closer than any spacecraft has ever been. The spacecraft is now deep in the encounter mode of operation, this means that if anything goes wrong it will…

  • T-7 days and counting to New Horizons Pluto Flyby

    NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is just 7 days away from its closest approach to Pluto, and this week we are going to look at the amazing images that have already been returned.  As the spacecraft gets closer and closer we are going to learn much more about the Planet and its moons. Before we take…

  • New Horizons Suffers Safe-Mode event

    Just 10 days before New Horizons closest approach to Pluto it suffered a Safe-Mode event on Saturday causing a lost of communications when the spacecraft handled the event and switched to its backup computer system. Thankfully the backup system took over and re-established communications and begun sending data back to Mission Control to allow them…

  • NASA announces Europa Mission Instrument Selection

    This afternoon NASA announced the Instruments that will be flown to Europa in 2020s. The NASA selectees are: Plasma Instrument for Magnetic Sounding (PIMS) — principal investigator Dr. Joseph Westlake of Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), Laurel, Maryland. This instrument works in conjunction with a magnetometer and is key to determining Europa’s ice shell…

  • LightSail in orbit

    The first privately built Solar Sail spacecraft LightSail is now in orbit.  Built by the Planetary Society the spacecraft was launched as a secondary payload on the Atlas V that launched earlier today. The successful deployment of the CubeSat was confirmed by the Societies Jason Davies via Twitter. Official #LightSail deployment time: 17:05:40.620, hh:mm:ss.sss (UTC).…