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The unmanned spacecraft, shaped like a pod and weighing some 585 kilogrammes (1,300 pounds) at launch, will land on the moon on February 13, 2019 if all goes according to plan, organisers SpaceIL told a news conference in Yehud, central Israel. The vessel will be launched via a rocket from American entrepreneur Elon Musk's SpaceX firm and its mission will include research on the moon's magnetic field. Its first task, however, will be to plant an Israeli flag on the moon, organisers said. The project began as part of the Google Lunar XPrize, which in 2010 offered $30 million (25...

Just released by NASA: striking close-ups of the mysterious world Ceres, taken by a robotic probe turned paparazzi. “These pictures are new to you and new to us too,” says Marc Rayman of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “It’s a wonderful flood of data.” Every 27 hours, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft swoops near the surface of Ceres to grab the close-ups. At its lowest point, the probe is only 22 miles up. In outer space, that’s virtually skimming the ground. The photo shoot started June 9; so far, Dawn has taken “hundreds” of pictures, says Rayman, “exotic alien...

The rover landing is one step in an envisioned series for ISRO that includes putting a space station in orbit and, potentially, an Indian crew on the moon. The government has yet to set a timeframe. The rover landing is one step in an envisioned series for ISRO that includes putting a space station in orbit and, potentially, an Indian crew on the moon. The government has yet to set a timeframe. “We are ready and waiting,’’ said Sivan, an aeronautics engineer The mission would solidify India’s place among the fleet of explorers racing to the moon, Mars and beyond...

Last week President Trump announced he would be initiating the creation of the “Space Corps” as a sixth branch within the armed forces of the United States. It soon became subject to “Star Wars,” “Star Trek,” and other science fiction themed memes that scorched across the Internet and remains a complex and tentative policy proposal within itself.Nonetheless, it is a strong reminder of both how the Trump Administration has revitalized much of our country’s space programs and the increasing economic and national security need for doing so.President Trump’s announcement follows his directive last year to reconvene the National Space Council,...

Last week, the United States’ National Space Council met for the second time at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Vice President Mike Pence led the meeting, which was titled “Moon, Mars and Worlds Beyond: Winning the Next Frontier.” The focus of this gathering of government officials, national security experts, and space entrepreneurs was the ever-expanding commercial and scientific opportunity of the “next frontier.”According to President Trump, the next frontier should include a return to the Moon with a subsequent trip to Mars. To fulfill this goal, the president’s budget includes $19.9 billion for NASA in the 2019 fiscal year, followed...

Apart from not yet knowing whether the core booster stuck its landing on the drone ship, the rest of the launch went perfectly!

An incredible panoramic view sent from the surface of the red planet has been created using images taken by the Mars Curiosity rover. It reveals the landscape of one of our closest galactic neighbours, which has been home to the exploratory vehicle since it landed in Gale Crater in 2012. One of the on-board cameras captured 16 separate scenic images that show various points on its journey, as seen from the top of the Vera Rubin Ridge, which were then stitched together to form the sweeping image. Thanks to some clever visual effects that give the scene a blue hue,...

This week, SpaceX has been working diligently to drum up media coverage for the unveiling of the "Falcon Heavy," its reusable, super heavy lift rocket that may be used for deep space missions. While the media narrative SpaceX is pushing might look appealing, federal appropriators should proceed with extreme caution.SpaceX is advertising this rocket as "the most powerful operational rocket in the world by a factor of two." The company projects it has the potential to lift 119,000 pounds into space – twice the amount of the current leader. While the concept sounds good in theory, so have all the...

Earlier this month, President Donald J. Trump signed a space policy directive to "restore American leadership in space." To the excitement of many, this directive includes sending men back to the Moon and perhaps even Mars. The prospect of making dreams a reality once again is enthralling, something we will do, echoing a previous chief executive, not because it is easy but because it is hard. To do all this, to optimize performance and ensure a successful, modern-day space program, government appropriators must adhere to a standard set of business protocols. It is essential NASA and the White House have...

President Donald Trump is scheduled to sign his administration’s first space policy directive in a White House ceremony Dec. 11, one that will formally direct NASA to send humans back to the moon. A White House schedule of the president’s activities, released late Dec. 10, includes a 3 p.m. Eastern “signing ceremony for Space Policy Directive 1.” The schedule didn’t provide additional details about the event or the document, but a White House official later confirmed that the directive is linked to human space exploration policy. “The president, today, will sign Space Policy Directive 1 (SPD-1) that directs the NASA...

If the first-in-a-quarter-century meeting last week of the National Space Council was indeed President Trump’s effort to ramp up our national space program and provide benefits for all, then good.But if it is as some perceived – a gauzy send-up to resume the practice of shoveling taxpayer dollars to Washington’s official Friends of the Industry – then we should have no part of it.David von Drehle of the Washington Post took the low road because the Trump administration is involved, calling the commercial prospects for humans “a distraction” and “all pie in the sky.”But in addition to hundreds of thousands...

Professor Stephen Hawking says humans have less than 1,000 years on Earth before we are wiped out by extinction. The celebrated physicist said humans will only survive if another planet was found to live on. The 74-year-old said unless this happens then humans will be wiped out in a mass extinction.

NASA's Juno Jupiter probe won't be settling into its final orbit around the giant planet this week after all. Juno was scheduled to fire its main engine for the final time during the probe's close Jupiter flyby on Wednesday (Oct. 19), in a maneuver that would reduce the time it takes the spacecraft to circle the gas giant from 53 Earth days down to 14 days. But the mission team decided to postpone the burn in order to investigate an issue with valves that are part of Juno's fuel-pressurization system, NASA officials said. "Telemetry indicates that two helium check valves...

Mars is a very windy place--so windy, in fact, that bright, oxidized martian soil is being scoured away by martian winds and dust devils to reveal darker, sub-surface soil with the end result of making the whole planet warmer. Mars is experiencing its own brand of climate change. Is this related to planet earth's greenhouse gas driven climate change? No. Is understanding the process important for our understanding of how planets evolve and change over time? Absolutely. In early April of this year, a young Carl Sagan Center Principal Investigator named Lori Fenton, together with her colleagues at NASA Ames...

On July 2nd, humanity's rugged little Mars explorer, Curiosity, automatically shut itself down and restricted most of its functions over the holiday weekend. Fortunately, scientists successfully secured communications with the rover, so all is not lost, and soon their diagnostics will reveal what went wrong. The little information they've received thus far points to "an unexpected mismatch between camera software and data-processing software in the main computer", though they'll know more after a full data dump. It will take some time to draw information across the gulf of space between Mars and Earth, which were only 46.8 million miles away...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – A journey from Earth to Mars could eventually take just 39 days -- cutting current travel time nearly six times -- according to a rocket scientist who has the ear of the US space agency. Franklin Chang-Diaz, a former astronaut and a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), says reaching the Red Planet could be dramatically quicker using his high-tech VASIMR rocket, .. The Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket -- to give its full name -- is quick becoming a centerpiece of NASA's future strategy as it looks to private firms to help meet the...

So... it could still get us to Mars in 70 days? Physicists have just published a new paper that suggests the controversial EM drive - or electromagnetic drive - could actually work, and doesn't defy Newton's third law after all. In case you've missed the hype, here's a quick catch-up: a lot of space lovers are freaking out about the EM drive because of claims it could get humans to Mars in just 10 weeks, but just as many are sick of hearing about it, because, on paper at least, it doesn't work within the laws of physics. Despite that...

U.S. officials appear poised to make history by approving the first private space mission to go beyond Earth's orbit, according to people familiar with the details. The government's endorsement would eliminate the largest regulatory hurdle to plans by Moon Express, a relatively obscure space startup, to land a roughly 20-pound package of scientific hardware on the Moon sometime next year. It also would provide the biggest federal boost yet for unmanned commercial space exploration and, potentially, the first in an array of for-profit ventures throughout the solar system. The expected decision, said the people familiar with the details, is expected...

The outcome of dueling versions of the National Defense Authorization Act could determine how much the U.S. lines Russia's pockets before what some lawmakers hope is a speedy transition to a domestically produced rocket engine. The RD-180 engine is built by NPO Energomash, a manufacturer mostly owned by the Russian Federation. It's used in the Atlas V rocket, built by Lockheed Martin and Boeing's United Launch Alliance. The House version of the NDAA approves all of the 18 requested engines. In the Senate, where there has been a lengthy battle over buying from Russia, the NDAA authorizes nine engines. Either...

NASA on Saturday successfully expanded and pressurized an add-on room at the International Space Station two days after aborting the first attempt when it ran into problems.