Orbiter

Astronomers last year discovered the body of a rocket headed for a lunar collision. The impact occurred on March 4, and the resulting crater was later discovered by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.Surprisingly, the crater actually consists of two craters, an eastern crater (18 meters in diameter, about 19.5 yards), overlying a western crater (16 meters in diameter, about 17.5 yards).The double crater was unexpected and may indicate that the rocket body had large masses at each end. Typically a spent rocket has mass…

Artist’s animation of a rocket booster crashing into the moon.Astronomers discovered a rocket body heading toward a lunar collision late last year. Impact occurred on March 4, 2022, with <span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="<div class=glossaryItemTitle>NASA</div><div class=glossaryItemBody>Established in 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an independent agency of the United States Federal Government that succeeded the…

Think the computers at your office are overdue for an update? They probably don't compare to one of the European Space Agency's best-known spacecraft. The ESA is upgrading its Mars Express orbiter's MARSIS (Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ioniospheric Sounding) software 19 years after its June 2003 launch. For context, the original code was created using a toolset built for Windows 98 — there are computers in museums that are newer than Microsoft's OS. The update promises to dramatically improve the Mars Express…

From orbit, this landscape on Mars looks like a lacy honeycomb or a spider web. But the unusual polygon-shaped features aren't created by Martian bees or spiders; they are actually formed from an ongoing process of seasonal change from created from water ice and carbon dioxide.  The HiRISE camera (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has seen a lot of polygon shapes in the years since 2006 when it went into orbit of Mars.(NASA/JPL/UArizona)Above: Polygonal dunes on Mars, as seen…

In April, PPE engineers successfully tested the integration of Aerojet Rocketdyne’s thruster with Maxar’s power procession unit and Xenon Flow Controller. Credit: NASA One of the chief goals of NASA’s Artemis program is to establish the first long-term presence on the Moon. A critical part of the support infrastructure to make that happen is Gateway, a space outpost that will orbit the moon. Long-term, Gateway will serve as a staging point for deep space exploration. It is still a bit early in the development cycle for…

A solar probe launched by the European Space Agency in 2020 made its first close approach to the Sun and captured the chaotic encounter in dazzling detail. The ESA's Solar Orbiter, on March 26, reached inside the orbit of Mercury, the closest planet to our Sun. Encounters like this are known as a perihelion, when a planet is closest to the life-giving Sun. However, one of the biggest challenges for a spacecraft reaching its perihelion is to withstand the incredible heat. When the Solar Orbiter reached this point, it faced…

A spacecraft looping around the Sun has made its first close approach – and filmed the encounter in glorious detail.The European Space Agency's (ESA) Solar Orbiter entered the close encounter, known as perihelion, on 26 March, coming in at a distance of around 48 million kilometers (30 million miles), inside the orbit of Mercury.  At that proximity, temperatures reached around 500 degrees Celsius (930 degrees Fahrenheit). Future perihelions are expected to get even closer and hotter.As it swooped around its orbit, the…

After sending missions to the Moon and Mars, the ISRO is now readying a spacecraft to orbit Venus to study what lies below the surface of the solar system's hottest planet, and also unravel the mysteries under the Sulfuric Acid clouds enveloping it.Addressing a day-long meeting on Venusian science, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman S Somnath said the Venus mission has been conceived, a project report made and "money identified".He urged scientists to focus on high-impact outcomes."Building and putting a…

The European Space Agency's solar orbiter has taken the highest-resolution image yet of the Sun's full disk and atmosphere, the corona, during its latest close flyby of our home star. The orbiter was at a distance of just 75 million kilometres – half the distance between Earth's average orbit and the Sun – on March 7, when it got the opportunity to take a close look at the Sun. Using its Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI), the spacecraft took 25 images, each with a nearly 10-minute exposure. Scientists then stitched…

Ever wondered how the Earth and the Moon would appear when seen from a Martian orbit? NASA has shared an image that showed them together in a single frame. The image was caught by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) when the Earth was 142 million kilometres from Mars. In the image, only the visible parts of the Earth and the Moon can be seen. While the Earth appeared in blue, the moon looked white against a dark, black canvas. The image was taken by MRO's High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera,…