billion

27 Jul

Bezos offers NASA $2 bn discount for human lunar lander mission

San Francisco: Fresh from his trip to the edge of space, Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos has offered NASA a discount of up to $2 billion to give his space company Blue Origin the human lunar landing system (HLS) contract, won by Elon Musks SpaceX earlier this year. Escalating his space war with Musk, Bezos in an open letter to the NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said on Monday that his company would close US space agency's near-term budgetary shortfall and producing a safe and sustainable lander that will return Americans to the surface of the Moon ï¿½ this time to stay. "I…

06 Mar

NASA Curiosity rover snaps stunning panorama of Mars surface

Washington: NASA's Curiosity rover has captured its highest-resolution panorama yet of the Martian surface -- containing 1.8 billion pixels.Composed of more than 1,000 images taken during the 2019 Thanksgiving holiday and carefully assembled over the ensuing months, the composite contains 1.8 billion pixels of Martian landscape, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement. The rover's Mast Camera, or Mastcam, relied on its medium-angle lens to also produce a lower-resolution, nearly 650-million-pixel panorama that includes the rover's deck and robotic arm.Both panoramas showcase Glen Torridon, a region on the side of Mount Sharp that Curiosity is exploring. Sitting still with few…