Exploration

Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lunar lander. Later this month, a Nova-C lunar lander will deliver several NASA science and technology payloads, including the Navigation Doppler Lidar (NDL), to the surface of the moon. Credit: Intuitive MachinesNASA’s Navigation Doppler Lidar technology, set for a lunar demonstration, highlights advancements in landing technology with implications beyond space exploration.Later this month, NASA’s commercial lunar delivery services provider Intuitive Machines will launch its Nova-C lunar lander…

Next week, Intuitive Machines will launch its IM-1 mission, sending the Nova-C lander barreling towards the Moon in what it hopes will be the first successful U.S. Moon landing since the Apollo program. There’s something special about this lander, though. It’s the first to include Columbia’s Omni-Heat technology as an insulating material. Heading into the final days before the launch, I caught up with Columbia’s VP of Innovation, Dr. Haskell Beckham, to talk about this intriguing partnership. Coming full…

Children gathered at First Nations University of Canada in Regina Thursday watched in awe as astronaut Jeremy Hansen unveiled the patch, designed by an Indigenous artist, that he will wear as the first Canadian to fly to the moon.Hansen, who is from London, Ont., is one of four crew members set to travel around the moon during the Artemis ll mission, which is expected to embark as soon as September 2025.He spoke at Thursday's event about how time he has spent with Indigenous elders has shaped his beliefs and…

Lucid Dreams Studio has announced that their “dark metroidvania,” Biomorph is slated to release on March 4. Alongside the announcement is a new animated trailer that, out of context, tells very little. That’s okay, because more informative trailers have already been released. I opened one in Steam, and after watching a bit of it, I switched back to writing this, and the video kept playing in the background. I can tell there are a lot of gooey effects in there because, past the halfway point of the trailer, it begins to…

Eighty-six years after Amelia Earhart disappeared, and following countless searches over and in the Pacific Ocean, the founder of a deep-sea exploration company believes he has found her airplane. The evidence: a few fuzzy images taken roughly 5,000 meters under the surface of the Pacific, showing what appears to be an object on the ocean floor. Shaped like a plane, the object is located where experts believe the famed pilot went down while attempting to become the first woman to fly around the world. Tony Romeo,…

It’s impossible to know the future, and yet, I’m confident that Ingenuity’s impact on how we explore space will be significant. The little Mars-bound helicopter proved time and again that it was up to the challenges it faced on the Red Planet, and while it has flown its last flight, I can’t help but think about how it’s going to change how we explore other worlds entirely.Powered flight on other worlds is no longer just a theoryFrom NASA’s blog: “This image of Mars was taken from the height of 33 feet (10 meters)…

A new report by the U.S. branch of the non-profit Environmental Investigation Agency says that investment interest and government tax incentives are fuelling intense mining exploration in remote northern B.C. — raising concerns about the environmental impacts of the work and its financial implications.The report focuses on the transboundary region, which falls along the border between the Alaska panhandle and the province of B.C. Much of this exploration is focused on the so-called Golden Triangle, which in many areas is…

NASA's groundbreaking Mars helicopter mission has ended. It featured the miniature robot helicopter Ingenuity, known for…

It is a truth universally acknowledged (or at least it should be by now) that America is a country founded upon — as well as cursed, colonized, and fertilized by — a bedrock of racism that continues to this day. Should you be unable to wrap your head around that in 2024, we’re not sure what to say to you. But to chalk up modern social inequity and state-sanctioned violence against certain communities to being “merely” a racially-biased phenomenon and simply leave it at that is insufficient. There’s something deeper…

As It Happens6:31NASA moon mission delays are nothing to worry about, says astronaut Chris HadfieldRetired Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield says that, from where he's sitting, the Artemis moon missions are coming along just fine.NASA announced Tuesday it is delaying two upcoming missions — including the flight meant to carry the first Canadian astronaut around the moon — due to technical issues with its spacecraft that could pose a danger to the crew.Artemis II, the first crewed mission to the moon in half a century, was…