Tag: Mars
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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…
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Why is Elon Musk involved in wide range of technologies
Elon Musk has made a number of headlines over the years for the different technologies that he is involved in. In this article we will look at each of these and how we believe they will be relevant for a future colony on Mars. Rockets and Spacecraft (SpaceX) SpaceX have made quite a name for themselves…
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Buzz Aldrin
Today I had the opportunity to meet with Astronaut Buzz Aldrin as part of my role with The Mars Foundation. Buzz is truly a unique character during out time together he had to do a phone interview with a South Dakota radio station which was interesting to listen to. He discussed many of his ideas…
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The Little Rover that Could continues to impress
Eleven years ago the Mars Opportunity Rover landed on the surface of the planet for a planned 90 sol (Mars day) mission, nearly 4000 sols later the rover is still operating. This week it achieved a another significant milestone becoming the first rover to complete the equivalent of a marathon driving across the surface of…
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India’s Mars Orbiter Mission successfully insert into Orbit
Today India’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) spacecraft arrived at Mars and was successfully placed into orbit. Launched 5th November, 13 days before NASA’s Maven the spacecraft, it took a slightly different route to Mars resulting in it arriving three days after MAVEN. This is the first spacecraft from India to travel this far from Earth and it…
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NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft reaches Mars
Following a ten month, 442 million miles journey NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) successfully entered into orbit of Mars this evening. The orbit insertion maneuver began with six thruster engines firing briefly to damp out deviations in pointing. Then, the six main engines quickly ignite and burn for 33 minutes to slow the craft,…
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Power Generation on Mars
While researching a longer blog post, to come soon, on Mars we were struck by the question of Power Generation, from most mission previews we have seen they plan to use Nuclear generators. While there are benefits to Nuclear generators there are also problems, the biggest of which is the public’s negativity towards launching anything that mentions…
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Weekly Space Blog 12/14
A lot has been happening this week in Space ISS Coolant Failure This week one of the two coolant systems on the station shutdown when a component reached a preset temperature limit. While not posing an immediate danger to the crew on-board the shutdown did require that NASA shutdown non-critical systems on the station to…
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Weekly Space Blog 6/29
Another busy week in space, here is this weeks blog. Saturn News Saturn was in the news twice this week, researches have discovered the mystery of the gigantic storm circling Saturn and a image capture by Cassini shows a propeller like structure in the rings. The researchers announced there findings based on analysis of images…
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The History of Mars Exploration (NASA)
To follow up the successful launch of MSL, which NASA confirmed last night was inserted into an almost perfect trajectory towards Mars, today we take a look at the history of successful Mars Exploration missions by NASA. The History of Mars Exploration Year Name Type Summary 1964 Mariner 4 Flyby First spacecraft to flyby of…