Great blistering blue barnacles!
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Next-gen Moon buggy FLEX conquers California desert, seeks lunar speed record
Space startup Astrolab, led by ex-SpaceX manager and NASA engineer Jaret Matthews, has successfully tested a lunar rover prototype that can operate telerobotically or ferry around a crew of two astronauts.
A full-scale prototype was lately tested in the California desert near Death Valley. The five-day field test (which included the participation of retired astronaut and orbital artiste Chris Hadfield) demonstrated both the rover’s ability to carry large payloads and cope with challenging terrain.
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Pioneer 10 turns 50: Remembering humankind’s first jaunt to Jupiter
We might be nearing the 50th anniversary of the last Apollo Moon landing, but spare a thought for NASA’s Pioneer missions. Pioneer 10, the first mission to the outer planets, was launched 50 years ago this month.
It is difficult to grasp the sheer number of unknowns facing scientists and engineers with the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft. Earlier Pioneer probes had been launched to study the Moon and space weather, but with twin spacecraft 10 and 11, scientists would be venturing outwards, past the asteroid belt and past Jupiter.
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At the time of writing, the now derelict Pioneer 10 and 11 probes are 130.6 AU and 108.7 AU from the Sun respectively. Voyager 2 is 129.6 AU and Voyager 1 is 155.7 AU. Both Voyagers are travelling considerably faster than the Pioneers. Data from Heavens-above.com
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NASA has extended the mission of the Ingenuity Mars helicopter and given it the task of assisting the Perseverance rover, thanks to past and future software updates.
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A space race of a sort in the UK has picked up pace in recent weeks, as aerospace company Orbex showed off its Kinloss launchpad in February and Skyrora this week opened its Midlothian rocket engine testing facility.
The facility was brought into service in less than six months and Skyrora paid tribute to the European Space Agency (ESA) for a grant awarded in 2021 which, in part, funded the construction of the site.
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A rocket fell from the sky in Paraná, Brazil.
According to Brazilian experts, a piece of the Falcon 9 rocket fell on Mr. João Ricardo´s rural property , a farmer from the city of São Mateus do Sul. Experts believe that the space debris was what was left after the re-entry of a rocket that caused a “ball of fire” in the skies of southern Brazil on March 8 of this year.
Mr. João Ricardo will not be able to keep the part of the rocket as a souvenir, as international agreements provide that the part must be delivered to SpaceX, which is obliged to pay for any damage caused by runaway rockets.
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A meteorite spent 6 years sitting on a tabletop. Two brothers were looking for gold with a metal detector and found a 26 KG meteorite and kept it as a piece of decoration. They thought it was a nugget of lead.
“I said to my brother: ‘It’s very beautiful, but it’s not gold. Let’s put it on the table and use it as a decoration’”.
“Some people hold it to see it better, they thought it was lead, because it was small and heavy, but we never imagined it was a meteorite.”
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Russia’s Mir space station returned to Earth 21 years ago
Today marks 21 years since Russia’s space station, Mir, returned to Earth.
As the rhetoric from Russian space agency Roscosmos intensifies, it is worth taking a look back at the deorbit of the Mir complex, the first components of which were launched during the Soviet era.
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