NASA’s budget proposal for 2014 includes plans for a $105 million robotic asteroid retrieval mission. The mission involves scooping up a 5-7m asteroid and bringing it back to lunar orbit where it can be visited by astronauts for further study. Space News, canvasing NASA’s partner agencies for responses to the surprising mission, turned up some interest, but a good deal [...]
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Curiosity Rover Exits ‘Safe Mode’
Source: NASA PASADENA, Calif. – NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has returned to active status and is on track to resume science investigations, following two days in a precautionary standby status, “safe mode.” Next steps will include checking the rover’s active computer, the B-side computer, by commanding a preliminary free-space move of the arm. The B-side computer was provided information last [...]
Amateur Astronomers Can Help Planetary Defense
In the week between March 4 and 10, four asteroids had passed close to Earth almost unnoticed. The largest was approximately 40 meters across, according to recent radar observations performed using NASA’s Goldstone radar antenna in California. “The scary part about this one, of course, is that it’s something we didn’t even know about,” said Patrick Paolucci, president of the online [...]
Robotic Refueling Mission to Conduct Ground Experiment
The next step for NASA’s Robotic Refueling Mission (RRM) will be a ground based simulation, in which a corrosive fuel oxidizer will be pumped into a mock-up satellite, due to take place in the second semester of 2013. “We’re going to attempt to demonstrate nitrogen tetroxide transfer,” said Frank Cepollina, associate director for the Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office at the [...]
Progress Cargo Arrives At ISS 3 Hours After Launch
A Russian Soyuz rocket carrying the robotic Progress 50 resupply ship was successfully launched to the International Space Station (ISS) from Baikonour Cosmodrome, on February 11th. Progress spacecraft are disposable Soyuz vehicles designed in 3 segments with a propellant module instead of the central crew return capsule used on the manned Soyuz vehicle. The cargo ship delivered nearly 3 tons [...]
S.H.E.E. Brings Space Architecture to Earth: Pan-European Consortium Launches an Innovative Project
A consortium of seven European companies and academic institutions has been awarded a 2 million Euro financial grant from the 7th European Framework Program. Responding to a call for proposals entitled “Space,” the team aims to develop a fully autonomous self-deployable habitat that could be used for further research in space architecture as well as a convenient housing for scientists [...]
Dextre Completes ISS Refueling Demonstration
On January 25, Dextre, a robotic manipulator aboard the International Space Station, completed a Robotic Refueling Mission demonstration that may be the first step towards achieving on-orbit refueling of satellites. “I don’t want to sound overly dramatic, but it is, or it might be, the start of what could be a revolution or a new era in how satellites are [...]
Mothership and her Hedgehogs: New Concept for Exploring Phobos
Exploring the low gravity environment of small celestial objects has always posed a challenge to researchers. Now, a collaboration among engineers at Stanford, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed a new concept. The idea was designed with exploration of the Martian moon Phobos in mind, and uses an autonomous robotic system named the Phobos [...]
Russia to Join ExoMars in 2013
The Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) and the European Space Agency (ESA) are going to sign an agreement in the first quarter of 2013 on Russia’s participation in the European ExoMars mission. “The agreement will be signed. We are starting financing this project,” Roscomos head Vladimir Popovkin told Izvestia newspaper on December 26. Popovkin discussed Russia’s readiness to join the [...]
NASA to White House: May I Bring My Asteroid Home?
Not long after the US Presidential administration flatly denied approving a mission to establish a space station in the second Earth-Moon Lagrange point that NASA sources had been talking up, rumor has it that the White House is considering an even more outlandish-sounding mission: bagging an asteroid and dragging it into lunar orbit. The weeks since the US presidential election [...]
