Science

NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance has taken its first, short drive on the surface of the red planet, two weeks after the robot science lab’s picture-perfect touchdown on the floor of a massive crater, mission managers said on Friday. The six-wheeled, car-sized astrobiology probe put a total of 6.5 meters (21.3 feet) on its odometer on

Searching for traces of life on Mars, like NASA is doing, is one thing. But scientists are also looking further afield. Could it be found beyond our solar system? A study published on Thursday in the prestigious journal Science reveals the discovery of a new exoplanet that could be instrumental in the hunt. Researchers will

Third time’s a charm? Not so for SpaceX, whose unmanned rocket exploded on the ground Wednesday after carrying out what had seemed to be a successful flight and landing – fresh on the heels of two fiery crashes. It was yet another flub involving a prototype of the Starship rocket, which SpaceX hopes one day

It’s the sort of chance that comes along just once in a blue Moon: a Japanese billionaire is throwing open a private lunar expedition to eight people from around the world. Yusaku Maezawa, an online fashion tycoon, was announced in 2018 as the first man to book a spot aboard the lunar spaceship being developed

A Soyuz rocket blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Sunday carrying Russia’s first satellite for monitoring the Arctic’s climate, the Roscosmos space agency said.  Video published by the Russian space agency showed the Soyuz blaster launching against grey skies at 0655 GMT (12:25pm IST), carrying an Arktika-M satellite.  Space agency chief Dmitry

Spacewalking astronauts ventured out Sunday to install support frames for new, high-efficiency solar panels arriving at the International Space Station later this year. NASA’s Kate Rubins and Victor Glover put the first set of mounting brackets and struts together, then bolted them into place next to the station’s oldest and most degraded solar wings. But

SpaceX has cancelled the planned launch of a Falcon 9 carrier rocket with 60 Starlink satellites. “Auto-abort at T-1:24 ahead of tonight’s Falcon 9 launch of Starlink; next launch opportunity is tomorrow, March 1 at 8:15 p.m. EST [03:15 GMT on Tuesday],” SpaceX said on Twitter on Sunday. Auto-abort at T-1:24 ahead of tonight’s Falcon

Countdown for the launch of PSLV-C51/Amazonia-1 mission commenced on Saturday from Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh. “Countdown for the launch of #PSLVC51/Amazonia-1 mission commenced today at 08:54 am from Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) SHAR, Sriharikota. The launch is scheduled tomorrow at 10:24 am,” Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said. Primary

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is getting ready to launch a new-generation compact rocket on its maiden orbital test flight, the space agency said. Bengaluru-headquartered ISRO has over the years realised five generation of launch vehicles – SLV-3, ASLV, PSLV, GSLV, and GSLV-MkIII. It had taken up development of the mini rocket – Small

The huge parachute used by NASA’s Perseverance rover to land on Mars contained a secret message, thanks to a puzzle lover on the spacecraft team. Systems engineer Ian Clark used a binary code to spell out “Dare Mighty Things” in the orange and white strips of the 70-foot (21-metre) parachute. He also included the GPS

NASA on Monday released the first high-quality video of a spacecraft landing on Mars, a three-minute trailer showing the enormous orange and white parachute hurtling open and the red dust kicking up as rocket engines lowered the rover to the surface. The footage was so good — and the images so breathtaking — that members

NASA scientists on Friday presented striking early images from the picture-perfect landing of the Mars rover Perseverance, including a selfie of the six-wheeled vehicle dangling just above the surface of the Red Planet moments before touchdown. The color photograph, likely to become an instant classic among memorable images from the history of spaceflight, was snapped

A fresh examination has revealed new details about the first black hole ever detected – which was spotted in 1964 and became the subject of a friendly wager between renowned scientists – including that it is bigger than previously known. Researchers said on Thursday that new observations of the Cygnus X-1 black hole, orbiting in

To realise his dream of satellite-powered Internet, tech billionaire Elon Musk needs to install antennas around the world. In northern France, a village hopes he’ll decide to keep those antennas far away. Saint-Senier-de-Beuvron, population 350, is none too thrilled to have been picked as a ground station for Musk’s Starlink project for broadband from space.

NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance, the most advanced astrobiology lab ever sent to another world, streaked through the Martian atmosphere on Thursday and landed safely inside a vast crater, the first stop on a search for traces of ancient microbial life on the Red Planet. Mission managers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Los Angeles

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

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,

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

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

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»,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Maine company that’s developing a rocket to propel small satellites into space passed its first major test on Sunday. Brunswick-based bluShift Aerospace launched a 20-foot (6-metre) prototype rocket, hitting an altitude of a little more than 4,000 feet (1,219 metres) in a first run designed to test the rocket’s propulsion and control systems. It