Video: Rosetta scientist Matt Taylor on the end of mission

Engineers suspect a piece of foreign object debris may be intermittently stalling a motor needed to place the Curiosity Mars rover’s drill bit onto rocks, and the robot’s ground team is assessing the source of the potential contamination.

Research teams across Europe spent the last half-year meticulously going through a wish list of experiments for the Philae comet lander without knowing whether they would ever get a chance to execute the tasks.

Intuitive Machines, under contract to carry NASA science instruments to the moon on a privately-developed robotic spacecraft, said this week its first commercial lunar mission will target landing in October 2021 near a deep, narrow valley named Vallis Schröteri.