NASA’s two rovers Spirit and Opportunity discovered abundant evidence that water once flowed on Mars. Both rover ended their missions by falling silent within dunes but the mission continues via orbiter and lander probes. Last February, NASA’s Perseverance rover arrived in Jezero Crater and began caching samples for later retrieval. Meanwhile, other missions, including one…
Columbia returned home after 16 days in orbit, its 28th voyage. Her crew included Commander Rick Husband, Pilot William McCool, mission specialists Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Blair Salton Clarke Michael Anderson as well as Israeli Payload Specialist Ilan Ramon. Engineers were alarmed to discover that about 82 seconds into the flight a suitcase-sized piece of foam…
Nasa’s spacecraft Orion is currently conducting a test flight around the Moon for NASA and has come closer to touching down on lunar surface than any human-made craft before it. Orion entered a far retrograde orbit this week, taking it 40,000 miles beyond any spacecraft designed specifically for humans before. It’s coming home NASA’s Orion…
Spacecraft are vehicles designed for travel in outer space, usually piloted or unpiloted and carrying scientific instruments for study and observation. China’s Tianwen 1 probe successfully reached Mars on May 14 and unloaded its six-wheeled rover Zhurong, named after the Chinese god of fire. To successfully land, retro rockets and landing legs were utilized. Mariner…
Delta-V Audio’s massively popular iOS app now arrives on desktop as part of Tracktion Presents initiative. Two granular engines provide instant gratification and encourage creative flow with features like grain frequency/length control, sample position LFO, stereo reverb/filter and pitch/ring modulation. Mark Watt, developer of Spacecraft plugin, shared more about its origins and what sets it…
Kepler has generated an abundance of data since its launch ten years ago. Although originally designed to observe 160,000 stars across one patch of sky, the photometer has since been used to uncover thousands of planets. Discovering extrasolar planets was done through measuring their slight drop in brightness when they passed in front of their…
SpaceX’s massive Starship spacecraft was finally ready to take flight this Thursday after suffering delays due to a frozen pressurant valve; however, shortly thereafter it experienced an explosion before stage separation was achieved. Frueh is currently working on a project using telescopes to improve how agencies catalog new objects in space, with hopes that doing…
NASA’s two Voyager spacecraft have outlived everyone’s expectations. Now approaching interstellar space, nearly 19 billion miles from our Sun. The probes still possess power to run their instruments, but limited supplies of radioactive material that generate the craft’s electricity will eventually force scientists to deactivate each of the seven remaining science subsystems. Mission Goals Voyager…
Spacecraft names can be both fun and creative; sometimes even tongue-in-cheek! One such NASA mission called OSIRIS-REx will explore Bennu Asteroid with this spacecraft before returning home with material samples of Bennu’s surface material for analysis on Earth. A spacecraft is a craft or machine designed for spaceflight. Spacecraft are machines or crafts specifically designed…
