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January 31, 2017
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MOON DAILY
India, Israel among five teams fighting for first private Moon landing



Moscow (Sputnik) Jan 27, 2017
Google and nonprofit company X Prize announced Wednesday that out of 33 original teams, five have secured launch contracts to send spacecraft to the moon. Teams must launch their spacecraft no later than December 31, 2017, to be in the running to win the $20-million Google Lunar X Prize. After arriving successfully on the surface of the moon, landers deployed from spacecraft sent by SpaceIL, Team Indus, Moon Express, Hakuto, and Synergy Moon must traverse 1,640 feet of lunar terrain and send video ... read more

MOON DAILY
China schedules Chang'e-5 lunar probe launch
China plans to launch the Chang'e-5 lunar probe at the end of November this year, from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in southern China's Hainan Province, aboard the heavy-lift carrier rocket Long ... more
MOON DAILY
The science behind the Lunar Hydrogen Polar Mapper mission
Arizona State University's NASA mission to visit a metal asteroid is just beginning, but the first mission that marked the school as a major player in space exploration has been under way for more t ... more
MOON DAILY
Eugene Cernan, last man to walk on moon, dead at 82
US astronaut Eugene Cernan, the last man to set foot on the moon, died Monday at age 82, NASA and his family announced. ... more
MOON DAILY
The moon is older than scientists thought
A UCLA-led research team reports that the moon is at least 4.51 billion years old, or 40 million to 140 million years older than scientists previously thought. The findings - based on an analysis of ... more
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MOON DAILY
New map of the Moon under creation in China
Chinese scientists are drawing a 1:2.5 million scale geological map of the Moon. Ouyang Ziyuan, first chief scientist of China's lunar exploration program, said five universities and research ... more
MOON DAILY
How the Moons That Came Before Collided to Form the Moon
The Moon, and the question of how it was formed, has long been a source of fascination and wonder. Now, a team of Israeli researchers suggests that the Moon we see every night is not Earth's first m ... more
MOON DAILY
Solar storms could spark soils at moon's poles
Powerful solar storms can charge up the soil in frigid, permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles, and may possibly produce "sparks" that could vaporize and melt the soil, perhaps as much as ... more
MOON DAILY
China plans probes to far side, poles of Moon
China is planning missions to explore the far side of the Moon and to send robots to explore both lunar poles. Plans to send astronauts to the Moon are also being discussed, according to Wu Ya ... more
MOON DAILY
Lunar sonic booms
The sonic boom created by an airplane comes from the craft's large, speeding body crashing into molecules in the air. But if you shrank the plane to the size of a molecule, would it still generate a ... more


India Inc joins hands to bid for moon mission

MOON DAILY
TeamIndus signs contract with ISRO for lunar mission
Domestic space technology startup TeamIndus on Thursday signed a first-of-its-kind contract with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to send a TeamIndus robot to the Moon. TeamIndus will l ... more
MOON DAILY
Moonwalker Buzz Aldrin stable after South Pole health scare
Retired astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the Moon, was recovering in a New Zealand hospital Friday after being medically evacuated from the South Pole while on a tourist trip, his management said. ... more

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Commercial Crew's Role in Path to Mars
The spacecraft, rockets and associated systems in development for NASA's Commercial Crew Program are critical links in the agency's chain to send astronauts safely to and from the Red Planet in the future, even though the commercial vehicles won't venture to Mars themselves. The key is reliable access to the International Space Station as a test bed. Changes to the human body during long-d ... more
Similar-Looking Ridges on Mars Have Diverse Origins

Opportunity marks 13 years of ground operations on Mars

Bursts of methane may have warmed early Mars

Close views show Saturn's Rings in unprecedented detail
Newly released images showcase the incredible closeness with which NASA's Cassini spacecraft, now in its "Ring-Grazing" orbits phase, is observing Saturn's dazzling rings of icy debris. The views are some of the closest-ever images of the outer parts of the main rings, giving scientists an eagerly awaited opportunity to observe features with names like "straw" and "propellers." Altho ... more
Cassini captures stunning view of Saturn moon Daphnis

Catching Cassini's call

Huygens: 'Ground Truth' From an Alien Moon



Public to Choose Jupiter Picture Sites for NASA Juno
Where should NASA's Juno spacecraft aim its camera during its next close pass of Jupiter on Feb. 2? You can now play a part in the decision. For the first time, members of the public can vote to participate in selecting all pictures to be taken of Jupiter during a Juno flyby. Voting begins Thursday, Jan. 19 at 11 a.m. PST (2 p.m. EST) and concludes on Jan. 23 at 9 a.m. PST (noon EST). "We ... more
Experiment resolves mystery about wind flows on Jupiter

Pluto Global Color Map

Lowell Observatory to renovate Pluto discovery telescope

Scientists and students tackle omics at NASA workshop
As Houston gears up for the Super Bowl, scientists and students are tackling Omics during the 2017 NASA Human Research Program (HRP) Investigators' Workshop in Galveston, Texas this week. Kicking off the week, astronaut, molecular biologist and Human Health and Performance Deputy Director Kate Rubins, Ph.D., awarded prizes to 10 art students at Mosbacher Odyssey Academy in Galveston on Tuesday f ... more
Mister Trump Goes to Washington

Airbus delivers propulsion test module for the Orion programme to NASA

NASA to rely on Soyuz for ISS missions until 2019

NIST updates 'sweet' 1950s separation method to clean nanoparticles from organisms
Sometimes old-school methods provide the best ways of studying cutting-edge tech and its effects on the modern world. Giving a 65-year-old laboratory technique a new role, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have performed the cleanest separation to date of synthetic nanoparticles from a living organism. The new NIST method is expected to significantly ... more
Nanocavity and atomically thin materials advance tech for chip-scale light sources

Ultra-precise chip-scale sensor detects unprecedentedly small changes at the nanoscale

New low-cost technique converts bulk alloys to oxide nanowires

Major review completed for SLS Exploration Upper Stage
NASA has successfully completed the exploration upper stage (EUS) preliminary design review for the powerful Space Launch System rocket. The detailed assessment is a big step forward in being ready for more capable human and robotic missions to deep space, including the first crewed flight of SLS and NASA's Orion spacecraft in 2021. "To send humans and even more cargo farther away from Ear ... more
Russia to call tender for 2nd Phase of Vostochny Spaceport construction in Fall

A May Day return for Proton-M carrier rocket?

ULA and team launches US military spy satellite



China looks to Mars, Jupiter exploration
China's plans for deep-space exploration included two Mars missions and one Jupiter probe. China plans its first Mars probe by 2020, said Wu Yanhua, vice director of the China National Space Administration. A second Mars probe will bring back samples and conduct research on the planet's structure, composition and environment, Wu said. Also on the agenda are an asteroid explorat ... more
China's first cargo spacecraft to leave factory

China launches commercial rocket mission Kuaizhou-1A

China Space Plan to Develop "Strength and Size"

Japan 'space junk' collector in trouble
An experimental 'space junk' collector designed to pull rubbish from the Earth's orbit has run into trouble, Japanese scientists said Tuesday, potentially a new embarrassment for Tokyo's high-tech programme. Over 100 million pieces of garbage are thought to be whizzing around the planet, including cast-off equipment from old satellites and bits of rocket, which experts say pose a growing thr ... more
For this metal, electricity flows, but not the heat

Researchers in Kiel can control adhesive material remotely with light

NASA studies cosmic radiation to protect high-altitude travelers



Cosmologists a step closer to understanding quantum gravity
Cosmologists trying to understand how to unite the two pillars of modern science - quantum physics and gravity - have found a new way to make robust predictions about the effect of quantum fluctuations on primordial density waves, ripples in the fabric of space and time. Researchers from the University of Portsmouth have revealed quantum imprints left on cosmological structures in the very ... more
China to set up gravitational wave telescopes in Tibet

MIT researchers reveal new technique for measuring gravity

A population of neutron stars can generate gravitational waves continuously

NASA's fermi sees gamma rays from 'hidden' solar flares
An international science team says NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has observed high-energy light from solar eruptions located on the far side of the sun, which should block direct light from these events. This apparent paradox is providing solar scientists with a unique tool for exploring how charged particles are accelerated to nearly the speed of light and move across the sun during so ... more
Cosmic dust that formed our planets traced to giant stars

Rapid gas flares discovered in white dwarf star for the first time

Keck will peer deep into the cosmic web with new spectrograph



Russia to face strong competition from China in space launch market
In the decade to come Russia will face strong competition from China for the commercial launch of satellites for developing countries, according to Ivan Moiseev, director of the Institute of Space Policy."China is trying to expand its space launching services, developing new boosters for different segments of the market," Moiseev told RIA Novosti. "It has constructed a new spacecraft launc ... more
Vega And Gokturk-1A are present for next Arianespace lightweight mission

Antares Rides Again

Four Galileo satellites are "topped off" for Arianespace's milestone Ariane 5 launch from the Spaceport

China looks to Mars, Jupiter exploration
China's plans for deep-space exploration included two Mars missions and one Jupiter probe. China plans its first Mars probe by 2020, said Wu Yanhua, vice director of the China National Space Administration. A second Mars probe will bring back samples and conduct research on the planet's structure, composition and environment, Wu said. Also on the agenda are an asteroid explorat ... more
China's first cargo spacecraft to leave factory

China launches commercial rocket mission Kuaizhou-1A

China Space Plan to Develop "Strength and Size"



New space weather model helps simulate magnetic structure of solar storms
The dynamic space environment that surrounds Earth - the space our astronauts and spacecraft travel through - can be rattled by huge solar eruptions from the sun, which spew giant clouds of magnetic energy and plasma, a hot gas of electrically charged particles, out into space. The magnetic field of these solar eruptions are difficult to predict and can interact with Earth's magnetic fields, cau ... more
Extreme space weather-induced blackouts could cost US more than $40 billion daily

ALMA starts observing the sun

Next-generation optics offer the widest real-time views of vast regions of the sun

ESA Planetary Science Archive gets a new look
ESA launches a new version of its Planetary Science Archive (PSA) website, the online interface to data from the agency's space science missions that have been exploring planets, moons and other small bodies in the Solar System. With a new design and enhanced search functionalities, the platform now provides a direct and simple access to the scientific data, helping scientists to discover and ex ... more
Iridium-1 NEXT Launched on a Falcon 9

Shaping the Future: Aerospace Works to Ensure an Informed Space Policy

Russia-China Joint Space Studies Center May Be Created in Southeastern Russia



Cash crunch for anti-Armageddon asteroid mission
A mission to smash a spacecraft into an asteroid moon to alter its trajectory, a possible dry-run for an exercise in saving the Earth from Armageddon, has run into a cash crunch. The proposed joint European-US mission, which sounds like it could form the plot for a sci-fi Hollywood blockbuster, has been dubbed AIDA (Asteroid Impact & Deflection Assessment). In 2022, the idea is to launch ... more
Micro spacecraft investigates cometary water mystery

Rare meteorites challenge our understanding of the solar system

Objective: To deflect asteroids, thus preventing their collision with Earth

Making AI systems that see the world as humans do
A Northwestern University team developed a new computational model that performs at human levels on a standard intelligence test. This work is an important step toward making artificial intelligence systems that see and understand the world as humans do. "The model performs in the 75th percentile for American adults, making it better than average," said Northwestern Engineering's Ken Forbu ... more
NASA develops AI for future exploration of extraterrestrial subsurface oceans

Over to you, automation

Swarm of underwater robots mimics ocean life

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