Spacecraft aiming to land on Mars have skipped past the planet, burned up on entry, smashed into the surface, and made it down amid a fierce dust storm only to spit out a single fuzzy gray picture before dying. Almost 50 years after the first casualty at Mars, NASA is attempting its hardest Martian touchdown
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A miniature rover being developed to explore the Moon’s surface is on track to join the search for water there, its Hungarian inventors believe – using a device that weighs less than a bag of sugar. Named after a Hungarian breed of dog, the Puli rover is a low-cost platform designed to carry different payloads,
An unmanned Russian cargo ship launched successfully Monday with a load of supplies for the International Space Station (ISS). The Progress MS-16 cargo ship blasted off as scheduled at 9:45am local time (9:15am IST) from the Russia-leased Baikonur launch facility in Kazakhstan and reached a designated orbit en route to the station. Пуск ракеты-носителя «Союз-2.1а»,
More than a century after the first powered flight on Earth, NASA intends to prove it’s possible to replicate the feat on another world. Transported aboard the Mars 2020 spacecraft that arrives at the Red Planet on Thursday, the small Ingenuity helicopter will have several challenges to overcome – the biggest being the rarefied Martian
After a seven-month journey, NASA’s Perseverance rover prepares to touch down on Mars on Thursday after first negotiating a risky landing procedure that will mark the start of its multi-year search for signs of ancient microbial life. The Mars 2020 mission, which set off late from Florida in late July, includes the largest ever vehicle
When NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance, a robotic astrobiology lab packed inside a space capsule, hits the final stretch of its seven-month journey from Earth this week, it is set to emit a radio alert as it streaks into the thin Martian atmosphere. By the time that signal reaches mission managers some 127 million miles (204
The UAE’s Hope probe sent back its first image of Mars, the national space agency said Sunday, days after the spacecraft successfully entered the Red Planet’s orbit. The picture “captured the largest volcano in the solar system, Olympus Mons, emerging into the early morning sunlight,” it said in a statement. The image was taken from an
Indian Space Research Organisation and location and navigation technology solutions provider MapmyIndia announced an initiative to partner together to offer India’s best, and fully indigenous, mapping portal, and geospatial services. It combines the power of MapmyIndia’s digital maps and technologies with ISRO’s catalogue of satellite imagery and earth observation data, according to MapmyIndia’s CEO and
China’s space agency released video footage from its spacecraft circling Mars on Friday, two days after it successfully entered the planet’s orbit in Beijing’s latest ambitious space mission. In the video, published by state broadcaster CCTV, the surface of the planet is seen coming into view out of a pitch black sky against the outside
In a move that will give chills to fans of the dystopian movie The Matrix, scientists have developed a wearable device that could use the human body to replace batteries. Echoing world-domineering robots’ use of enslaved humans in the 1999 cyberpunk movie, US researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder have created an environmentally-friendly gadget that
An uncrewed Chinese spacecraft on Wednesday successfully entered orbit around Mars after a 6-1/2-month journey from Earth, China’s space agency said, in the country’s first independent mission to the red planet. The robotic probe carried out a 15-minute burn of its thrusters at 7:52pm Beijing time (5:22pm IST), the China National Space Administration said in a
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan unveiled an ambitious 10-year space programme for his country Tuesday that includes missions to the moon, sending Turkish astronauts into space and developing internationally viable satellite systems. Erdogan announced the programme, seen as part of his vision for placing Turkey in expanded regional and global role, during a live televised
The United Arab Emirates’ first mission to Mars is set to reach the red planet and enter its orbit on Tuesday following a seven-month, 494 million km journey, allowing it to start sending data about the Martian atmosphere and climate. This would make the UAE the fifth space agency to reach the planet. The Mars
A prototype of SpaceX’s Starship rocket exploded during a landing attempt minutes after a high-altitude experimental launch from Boca Chica, Texas, on Tuesday, in a repeat of an accident that destroyed a previous test rocket. The Starship SN9 that blew up on its final descent, like the SN8 before it, was a test model of
Space tourism company Virgin Galactic said Monday it planned a new test flight for its SpaceShipTwo craft this month after an aborted test in early December. “The flight window will open on February 13 with opportunities to fly throughout February, pending good weather conditions and technical readiness,” Richard Branson’s company said. “Pre-flight preparations are already
SpaceX announced Monday it’s aiming to launch this year the first all-civilian mission into Earth’s orbit, led by a tech billionaire who plans to raffle off one of the spots aboard the craft. Entrepreneur Jared Isaacman is to be joined by three other novice astronauts for a multi-day journey into space, including one lucky winner