We’re still reeling from last week’s Astrobotic failure, in which a catastrophic propellant leak rendered the Peregrine lunar lander incapable of completing its Moon landing mission.
Failure in space dominated our headlines this week, with Astrobotic’s uncrewed lunar lander mission Peregrine-1 experiencing critical issues shortly after leaving Earth. Back on the ground, though, NASA finally—after months of trying—succeeded in opening the container filled with samples plucked from the asteroid…
For millennia, our species looked at the Moon as a place that would forever be beyond our reach, but 20th-century technologies finally made our natural satellite accessible to probes, landers, and even human explorers. Despite these achievements, however, the Moon has furiously resisted our overtures, whether it be…
An upcoming launch will usher in a new era of commercial payloads being dropped off to deep space destinations like the Moon. As we gain greater access to space, things are going to start getting weird.
Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander is slated to blast off on Monday, January 8, carrying an assortment of goodies, including cutting-edge scientific rovers, bitcoin, and a piece of Mount Everest. No doubt, this ain’t your grandfather’s Moon mission, as the era of commercial space deliveries is now upon us.
Our top science stories this week include a physics experiment to turn light into matter, an update from NASA’s Juno mission (it’s about to make a close encounter with Jupiter’s moon Io), and a roundup of the best archaeological discoveries of 2023.
Experimental rockets, Moon landers, planetary flybys, breathtaking spacewalks, and vintage boosters—these are just a few of the many stories that contributed to the most striking and memorable images of 2023.
The surface of the Moon is littered with defunct hardware from past missions that are now buried amongst the lunar regolith. A recent crash site left a distinct and curious mark, creating two impact craters of equal size. Scientists examining the collision believe that there may have been an undisclosed object that…
Still on a high from launching back-to-back missions to the Moon and Sun, India is now ready to test its ability to send astronauts to space.
India’s Chandrayaan-3 lander was spotted on the Moon just a few days after touching down on its cratered surface near the lunar south pole.