spacecraft Archives - Page 3 of 3

02 Aug

Israel launches first environmental research satellite

Jerusalem: Israel has successfully launched its first spatial environmental research vehicle designed for orbital monitoring of Earth's vegetation, the Israel Space Agency (ISA) said on Wednesday.The Venus satellite (Vegetation and Environment Monitoring New Micro-Satellite) is an earth-observation micro-satellite designed jointly by Israel's agency and France's National Centre for Space Studies (CNES), Efe news reported. Venus has a dual mission: one scientific and the other technological. The scientific mission will monitor Earth's vegetation using a camera capable of recording 12 narrow spectral bands. The technological mission will test the operation of an innovative electric propulsion system based on the Israeli-designed Hall Effect Thrusters.…

20 May

SpaceX Dragon to deliver crew supplies, research to ISS

Washington: SpaceX will launch its Dragon spacecraft for its 11th commercial resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS) from NASA's Kennedy Space Centre on June 1. Dragon will lift into orbit atop the Falcon 9 rocket carrying crew supplies, equipment and scientific research to crewmembers living aboard the station, NASA said in a statement on Saturday. The flight will deliver investigations and facilities that study neutron stars, osteoporosis, solar panels and tools for Earth-observation. "In addition to studying the matter within the neutron stars, the payload also includes a technology demonstration called the Station Explorer for X-ray Timing and Navigation…

13 May

NASA drops idea of putting humans on first flight of new rocket

Washington: NASA has dropped the idea of putting astronauts aboard the first integrated flight of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft -- Exploration Mission-1, or EM-1 -- the first in a broad series of exploration missions that will take humans to deep space, and eventually to Mars. NASA's original plan was to launch the test flight without crew, but in February, reportedly at the request of the Donald Trump administration, NASA began an effort looking at the feasibility of putting crew aboard EM-1. "After weighing the data and assessing all implications, the agency will continue pursuing the original plan…

05 Apr

NASA’s Cassini probe set to end 20-year journey

Washington: NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which was launched in 1997 and arrived at Saturn in 2004, is about to begin the final chapter of its remarkable story this month. On April 26, the spacecraft will make the first in a series of dives through the 2,400-kilometre gap between Saturn and its rings as part of the mission's grand finale, NASA said. "No spacecraft has ever gone through the unique region that we'll attempt to boldly cross 22 times," said Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "What we learn from Cassini's daring final orbits will further our…

11 Feb

New Horizons probe healthy after hiccup: NASA

Washington: NASA said its New Horizons spacecraft is healthy and operating normally after just over 24 hours in a protective "safe mode" -- the result of a command-loading error that occurred this week. The spacecraft is designed to automatically transition to safe mode under certain anomalous conditions to protect itself from harm. In safe mode, the spacecraft suspends its timeline of activities and keeps its antenna pointed toward Earth to listen for instructions from the Mission Operations Center at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. "Our rapid recovery was supported by other NASA missions that provided…

23 Jan

NASA wants you to pick picture sites for Jupiter probe

Washington: Are you a space enthusiast? Then there is a golden opportunity for you to decide where NASA's Juno spacecraft should aim its camera during its next close flyby of Jupiter on February 2. NASA has, for the first time, offered space enthusiasts an opportunity to vote on the site of images that the JunoCam will capture as the spacecraft approaches Jupiter's north pole on February 2, the space agency said in a statement. "We are looking forward to people visiting our website and becoming part of the JunoCam imaging team," said Candy Hansen, investigator in the Juno probe from the…

19 Jan

NASA aims to send spacecraft to giant ‘metal’ asteroid

New York: NASA is preparing to send a spacecraft to a giant "metal" asteroid that may tell scientists the secret of how our solar system was formed. Led by Arizona State University researchers, the mission called "Psyche" is focused to know whether the asteroid, called "16 Psyche" and thought to be made of iron and nickel, could be part of what was an earlier planet perhaps as large as Mars. "This is an opportunity to explore a new type of world -- not one of rock or ice but of metal," Lindy Elkins-Tanton, Psyche's principal investigator, said in a statement. Psyche robotic…

16 Jan

Don’t miss Jupiter’s Great Red Spot

Washington: Scientists have released incredible new images of Jupiter megastorm from the data sent by its Juno probe that reveal a crescent Jupiter and the iconic Great Red Spot. Below the Great Red Spot is visible a reddish long-lived storm known as Oval BA. It also has a series of storms shaped like white ovals, known informally as the 'string of pearls.' The images were created by Roman Tkachenko, a citizen scientist using data from Juno's JunoCam instrument, NASA said in a statement on Monday. Jupiter which is the biggest in the solar system, appears as a deep red orb surrounded…