Fresh off of its first asteroid encounter that revealed a bonus space rock, Lucy is now ready for the big leagues. The NASA spacecraft began maneuvering its way to Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids, traveling to a farther orbit in deep space in order to reach the Jovian system.
Space is hard, as the cliché reminds us, and that was plenty clear this week, as several groups ran into trouble: NASA with its aging Voyager 1 spacecraft, AstroForge with a struggling debut mission to prove asteroid mining can work, and a few missing-in-action satellites from a recent SpaceX launch. Back on Earth,…
Since launching its first test mission to vaporize bits of an asteroid in space, AstroForge has struggled to keep a hold of its spacecraft and is now at risk of losing the ability to send commands to the in-orbit demonstration.
Update: October, 13, 11:17 a.m. ET: Psyche is finally in space. The Falcon Heavy lifted off on time, sending the probe on its 2.2 billion-mile journey to a highly metallic asteroid.
The new era of space exploration is opening entirely new possibilities, including the tantalizing prospect of mining for resources on the Moon and asteroids. Sounds exciting—and potentially very profitable—but the reality of the situation is that space mining is completely uncharted territory. Plenty of prospecting…