Solar System – Page 14 – Spaceflight Now

Atlas 5 for Solar Orbiter launch returns to assembly building for inspections

January 22, 2020 Stephen Clark

United Launch Alliance moved its next Atlas 5 rocket off its Florida launch pad Wednesday for inspections after a cooling duct unexpectedly disconnected before a planned countdown rehearsal to prepare for liftoff next month with the joint U.S.-European Solar Orbiter mission. The roll back to the Vertical Integration Facility at Cape Canaveral’s Complex 41 launch pad could delay Solar Orbiter’s liftoff, which was scheduled for Feb. 5

NASA invites public to vote on name for Mars 2020 rover

January 22, 2020 Stephen Clark

NASA has announced the nine finalists for the name of the space agency’s next Mars rover — scheduled for launch in July — and invited the public to vote on the candidates before making a final selection in the coming months.

ESA’s Huygens probe landed on Saturn’s moon Titan 15 years ago

January 14, 2020 Stephen Clark

Fifteen years after accomplishing the first-ever landing on Saturn’s moon Titan, lessons learned from the European Space Agency’s Huygens spacecraft continue aiding designers of future planetary probes, according to new results from a study looking at why the landing craft spun the wrong way as it descended through Titan’s thick, hazy atmosphere.

Stacking of ULA’s next Atlas 5 rocket begins at Cape Canaveral

January 6, 2020 Stephen Clark

United Launch Alliance teams began stacking an Atlas 5 rocket inside a vertical hangar at Cape Canaveral Monday in preparation for an early February launch with the Solar Orbiter spacecraft, a joint U.S.-European probe that will take the first pictures of the sun’s poles.

China publishes Chang’e 4 data one year after first landing on far side of the moon

January 6, 2020 Stephen Clark

Chinese officials marked the one-year anniversary of the Chang’e 4 mission’s historic first soft landing on the far side of the moon Friday with the public release of data collected by scientific instruments and cameras on the lunar lander and rover.

NASA’s next Mars rover will soon ship to Cape Canaveral launch site

January 2, 2020 Stephen Clark

Fresh off its first terrestrial test drive, NASA’s Mars 2020 rover was displayed to media last week at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California before it’s packed up and flown across the country to Cape Canaveral in February to begin final launch preparations for liftoff in July.

NASA selects site for OSIRIS-REx to collect asteroid samples

December 12, 2019 Stephen Clark

Using precise autonomous navigation algorithms, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will descend to the surface of an asteroid next year, aiming to retrieve rock specimens for return to Earth from a gravelly pit flanked by hazardous boulders, scientists said Thursday.

Amateur sleuth helps locate crash site of India’s Vikram moon lander

December 2, 2019 Stephen Clark

An Indian software developer and mechanical engineer combing through high-resolution imagery captured by a NASA spacecraft has located debris scattered on the lunar surface in September by the crash of the Vikram lander, India’s first probe to attempt a soft touchdown on the moon, NASA said Monday.

Chinese Mars rover completes landing trial ahead of 2020 launch

November 19, 2019 Stephen Clark

China has performed a hover and hazard avoidance test on a model the country’s first Mars rover, while engineers ready the real spacecraft for launch toward the red planet in mid-2020.

SpaceX offering Starship to NASA for lunar landing missions

November 19, 2019 Stephen Clark

SpaceX is eligible to propose using its next-generation Starship vehicle to carry NASA robotic science payloads to the lunar surface, the U.S. space agency announced Monday, on missions that could precede future Starship flights with people on-board. SpaceX is one of five companies NASA selected Monday to join a roster of commercial transportation providers to deliver scientific instruments and technology demonstration packages to the moon as soon as 2022.