(Reuters) – Two veteran cosmonauts sailed through a six-hour spacewalk outside the International Space Station on Monday to prepare the orbital outpost for a new module and better shield its living quarters against small meteorite and debris impacts, officials said. Station commander Gennady Padalka and flight engineer Yuri Malenchenko opened the hatch on the station’s […]
After Curiosity, uncertainty lingers on NASA’s Mars program
(Reuters) – This week’s arrival of NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity set the stage for a potentially game-changing quest to learn whether the planet most like Earth ever had a shot at developing life, but follow-up missions exist only on drawing boards. The United States had planned to team up with Europe on a trio of […]
Mars rover Curiosity sends home first color photo
(Reuters) – NASA’s newly landed Mars science rover Curiosity snapped the first color image of its surroundings while an orbiting sister probe photographed litter left behind during the rover’s daring do-or-die descent to the surface, scientists said Tuesday. Curiosity’s color image, taken with a dust cover still on the camera lens, shows the north wall […]
Rover to probe whether Mars was life-friendly in the past
(Reuters) – NASA plans to follow up a decade-long search for Mars’ lost water with a mission to learn whether the Red Planet once harbored other ingredients necessary for life. The astrobiological hunt begins once the $2.5 billion Mars Science Lab rover Curiosity lands itself beside a towering mountain that rises from the floor of […]
Three firms share $1.1 billion of NASA space taxi work
Calif. Aug 3 (Reuters) – NASA will pay more than $1 billion over the next 21 months to three companies to develop commercial spaceships capable of flying astronauts to the International Space Station, the agency said Friday. The lion’s share of the $1.1 billion allotted for the next phase of NASA’s so-called ”Commercial Crew” program […]
History littered with failed Mars probes
NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter was about a week away from wrapping up an 11-month journey to the Red Planet in 1999 when engineers noticed a problem – the spacecraft, designed to study Mars’ environment, was not where it was supposed to be. The gap grew alarmingly over the next few days. On September 23, Climate […]
History littered with failed Mars probes
(Reuters) – NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter was about a week away from wrapping up an 11-month journey to the Red Planet in 1999 when engineers noticed a problem – the spacecraft, designed to study Mars’ environment, was not where it was supposed to be. The gap grew alarmingly over the next few days. On September […]
Study projects growing demand for commercial spaceflights
(Reuters) – Commercial suborbital spaceflights should bring in between $600 million and $1.6 billion in revenue in their first decade of operations, according to a study commissioned by the U.S. and Florida governments and released on Wednesday. Tourism drives about 80 percent of the demand for suborbital flights, which reach about 63 miles above the […]
NASA rover closing in on Mars to hunt for life clues
(Reuters) – NASA’s Mars rover was on its final approach to the red planet on Sunday, heading toward a mountain that may hold clues about whether life has ever existed on Mars, officials said. The rover, also known as Curiosity, has been careening toward Mars since its launch in November. The nuclear-powered rover the size […]
NASA’s Mars rover may be in for blind landing
NASA’s new Mars rover is heading for a risky do-or-die touchdown next month to assess conditions for life on the planet, but the U.S. space agency may not know for hours whether it arrived safely, managers said on Monday. That’s because the satellite that NASA was counting on for real-time coverage of the Mars Science […]