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China sets November launch for lunar sample return mission
China plans to launch a robotic mission to return samples from the lunar surface, the first such mission in four decades, in November on top of the country's new heavy-lift Long March 5 rocket, according to state media reports.
New U.S. weather satellite with improved camera sends back first images
A new-generation weather satellite launched in November promising to deliver better images of hurricanes, storms and clouds than any mission before has returned its first tantalizing pictures from geostationary orbit.
Japanese spacecraft spots planet-spanning wave on Venus
Images from Japan's Akatsuki spacecraft have revealed a gigantic wave in the atmosphere of Venus, and scientists say it may be the largest such feature in the solar system.
New Horizons to continue mission of discovery with Kuiper Belt encounter
Scientists planning the the next phase of NASA's New Horizons mission, a robotic craft that completed the first exploration of Pluto in 2015, are going into the flyby of a frozen, faraway city-sized clump of rock on New Year's Day 2019 armed with little knowledge of the target lurking around 4 billion miles from Earth.
Future of asteroid deflection mission to be decided soon
Decisions on the future of a joint robotic mission between NASA and the European Space Agency to demonstrate the ability to deflect an asteroid on a collision course with Earth have been put off until later this year after European governments declined to fully fund their part of the project in December.
Saturn’s shepherd moon Daphnis makes waves
NASA's Cassini spacecraft has captured the first close-up view of Daphnis, one of at least 62 moons found orbiting Saturn, plowing a path through the planet's icy rings and raising waves in its wake.
Two asteroid missions get nod from NASA
NASA has selected two robotic missions to visit asteroids in the early 2020s from a field of proposed interplanetary probes, approving projects to explore a metallic relic from the early solar system and a half-dozen so-called Trojan objects left over from the formation of the outer planets.
Planet Earth observed through telescope orbiting Mars
One of NASA's satellites orbiting Mars has looked back home to record a Martians-eye view of the Earth and moon from 127 million miles across the solar system.
Internal debris may be causing problem with Mars rover’s drill
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.
Hunt for water at Ceres goes underground
NASA's Dawn spacecraft has continued its survey of the dwarf planet Ceres this year, discovering rock-bound ice hidden just beneath the airless world's rugged surface and a handful of icy outcrops inside craters in the northern hemisphere, raising hopes that Ceres could have once held a buried habitable ocean of liquid water.