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ESA science missions back in action after coronavirus-related shutdown
Four of the European Space Agency's robotic missions, including the agency's two Mars orbiters, are resuming science operations after a stand-down triggered by the positive diagnosis of an employee at ESA's control center in Germany with the coronavirus.
SpaceX selected to launch Intelsat telecom satellite, NASA pollution monitor
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch an Intelsat communications satellite with a NASA-funded air pollution monitor to be positioned over the Americas in 2022, officials announced Tuesday.
Launch of ExoMars rover delayed to 2022
Most parts of the joint European-Russian ExoMars lander and rover are nearly ready for launch, but trouble with parachutes, electronics, software and concerns about the growing coronavirus pandemic have delayed the mission's departure to Mars from this year until 2022, officials announced Thursday.
Seventh-grader wins contest to name new Mars rover: Perseverance
Twenty-eight thousand students across the United States submitted essays and proposed names for NASA's newest Mars rover and on Thursday, the agency announced the winner: Perseverance, submitted by Virginia seventh-grader Alexander Mather.
DSCOVR resumes operations after eight-month outage
The Deep Space Climate Observatory has resumed regular observations after NOAA and NASA engineers uplinked a software patch to the spacecraft a million miles from Earth, restoring data on space weather and a daily series views of the sunlit side of our home planet.
NASA taps SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket to launch mission to metal asteroid
NASA has selected SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket to launch a robotic mission in July 2022 to explore Psyche, a metal-rich asteroid located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The Psyche probe is NASA's first mission assigned to fly on SpaceX's heavy-lift launcher.
NASA’s InSight mission shows Mars is a seismically active world
While one of its two science instruments remains sidelined, NASA's InSight probe has proven Mars is seismically active through the detection of hundreds of quakes, some of which can be traced to a volcanic region nearly 1,000 miles away.
Phobos sample return mission enters development for 2024 launch
Japan's space agency has approved a robotic mission to retrieve a sample from the Martian moon Phobos for return to Earth to begin full development for a planned launch in 2024, officials said Thursday.
Mars 2020 rover arrives at Kennedy Space Center for July launch
Two U.S. Air Force cargo planes delivered the Mars 2020 rover, cruise stage, descent module and the Mars Helicopter to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida this week for final assembly, fueling and mounting atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket in preparation for liftoff in July.
NASA to assess proposals for probes to Venus, moons of Jupiter and Neptune
NASA announced Thursday it will fund four concept studies for potential robotic missions to Venus, Jupiter's moon Io and Neptune's moon Triton ahead of a decision next year to approve up to two of the projects for launch in the mid-to-late 2020s.