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NASA spells out support for SpaceX’s Red Dragon Mars mission
If SpaceX is able to dispatch a robotic Dragon capsule to land on the red planet in 2018 on time and successfully, engineers stand to get a lesson on what it will take to eventually send humans there, capturing key data on an untested Mars landing scheme a decade sooner than NASA could do it, space agency officials said this week.
ExoMars orbiter fine-tunes path toward red planet
A European spacecraft cruising toward Mars fired its main engine Thursday, tweaking its trajectory and helping set up for carefully-choreographed simultaneous maneuvers Oct. 19 to place part of the tandem mission into orbit around the red planet and deposit a stationary battery-powered lander on the Martian surface.
NASA developing plans for commercially-built Mars orbiter
NASA is advancing a plan to send a robotic orbiter to Mars in the early 2020s, developing designs with five U.S. satellite makers for a mission to extend high-resolution mapping capabilities, telecommunications relay functions, and potentially act as a waypoint for Martian soil samples destined for return to Earth.
40 years since Viking, scientists still on the hunt for life on Mars
Four decades after NASA's Viking landers acquired humanity's first view of the surface of Mars, a planet whose reality lived in the imaginations of skywatchers for millennia, a definitive smoking gun for microbial life there still eludes scientists.
Researchers eager for Juno’s first chance for Jupiter science
NASA's Juno spacecraft fine-tuned its orbit around Jupiter this week, helping steer the spinning space probe on a course to dip beneath the giant planet's radiation belts in late August for the first time with all its science instruments activated.
Delta 2 rocket being assembled at Vandenberg for penultimate launch
The next-to-last Delta 2 rocket is being stacked at its California launch site to take flight in January to put a civilian weather satellite into polar orbit.
VideoSee Jupiter’s Galilean moons in motion from Juno’s camera
Juno's visible camera had a bird's-eye view of Jupiter's four largest moons over the last few weeks, recording the satellites in their orbital ballet around the giant planet as the spacecraft approached from above Jupiter's north pole.
Juno spacecraft braves the unknown at Jupiter to enter orbit
Setting up post at the king of planets, NASA's Juno spacecraft fired its main engine for 35 minutes Monday, steering into orbit around Jupiter to peer inside the gas giant and give scientists a better idea of how the solar system took shape 4.6 billion years ago.
Scientists on edge awaiting Juno’s perilous encounter with Jupiter
Speeding toward Jupiter at nearly 40 miles per second, NASA's Juno spacecraft must brave a field of computer-zapping radiation and Jupiter's tenuous ring of ice and dust particles when it brakes into orbit around the giant planet Monday.
Live coverage: NASA’s Juno spacecraft arrives at Jupiter
NASA's Juno spacecraft barreled toward a Fourth of July rendezvous with Jupiter after a 1.7-billion-mile, five-year trip from planet Earth. The research probe's main engine ignited for 35 minutes to maneuver Juno into orbit, and engineers received confirmation of the burn's conclusion on time at 11:53 p.m. EDT Monday (0353 GMT Tuesday).