The Perseverance rover has been toiling on the Martian surface for over three years, collecting rock samples that will eventually be brought to Earth if all goes according to plan. But the rover has also picked up hitchhikers, in the form of traces of Martian atmosphere that are squeezed into the “headspace” of the…
Unlike its predecessor Curiosity, NASA’s Perseverance rover is explicitly intended to “search for potential evidence of past life,” according to the official mission objectives.
NASA is calling on industry players to come up with an alternative plan to return rocky samples from Mars at a lower cost and an earlier date.
After opening up that stubborn sample canister, NASA was finally able to weigh the full amount of asteroid bits snagged by its spacecraft more than three years ago. As it turns out, there is plenty of space rock that made its way to Earth.
The aluminum canister containing bits of an ancient space rock has finally been opened, revealing the bulk of the asteroid Bennu sample in all its glory.
After months of fidgeting with a canister that contained rocky samples from an ancient asteroid, NASA engineers have finally removed two stubborn fasteners that appeared to be preventing the space agency from collecting the full amount of Bennu’s debris.
NASA is scaling back on its ambitious Mars Sample Return (MSR) program, fearing federal budget cuts to the space agency’s plan to bring back rock and dust from the Red Planet, which has come under heavy scrutiny for having unrealistic costs and timelines.
In September, fragments of a near-Earth asteroid were carefully dropped off in the Utah desert. The space rocks hold clues to the origin of the solar system and can possibly answer crucial questions about how our planet came to be—if only we can get to them first.
NASA has announced a delay in its ambitious Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s moon Titan, moving the launch date to July 2028. This decision, driven by budget uncertainties, comes despite the mission successfully passing key design reviews. Worryingly, the space agency is delaying formal confirmation of the mission until…
