SpaceX to launch NASA's Europa Clipper on Falcon Heavy rocket in 2024

Washington DC (UPI) Jul 23, 2021 NASA on Friday awarded SpaceX the $178 million contract to launch the agency's Europa Clipper mission to study Jupiter's fourth-largest moon. The mission is expected to depart October 2024 on the private aerospace company's Falcon Heavy rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. "Europa Clipper will...

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Scientists unveil European Mars rover's meteorite-hunting instruments

Washington DC (UPI) Jul 23, 2021 The ExoMars rover Rosalind Franklin, scheduled to launch in 2022, is tasked with hunting for past life on the Red Planet. Most of the rover's scientific probing will be focused on the first six inches of Mars' crust, but the spacecraft will also be programmed to identify, sample and analyze meteorites strewn...

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Hubble returns to full science observations and releases new images

Baltimore MD (SPX) Jul 24, 2021 NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is back in business, exploring the universe near and far. The science instruments have returned to full operation, following recovery from a computer anomaly that suspended the telescope's observations for more than a month. Science observations restarted the afternoon of Saturday,...

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The Red Planet has a larger core and a thinner crust

Berlin, Germany (SPX) Jul 24, 2021 Mars' surface is known in great detail through exploration using orbiting spacecraft. But until now its interior structure could only be derived indirectly or simulated using computational models. With the participation of the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR), NASA's InSight...

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NASA Awards Launch Services Contract for the Europa Clipper Mission

Washington DC (SPX) Jul 24, 2021 NASA has selected Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, California, to provide launch services for Earth's first mission to conduct detailed investigations of Jupiter's moon Europa. The Europa Clipper mission will launch in October 2024 on a Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A...

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Better understanding of Earth's atmospheric chemistry from studying Mars?

Paris (ESA) Jul 24, 2021 Long-term studies of ozone and water vapour in the atmosphere of Mars could lead to better understanding of atmospheric chemistry for the Earth. A new analysis of data from ESA's Mars Express mission has revealed that our knowledge of the way these atmospheric gases interact with each other is incomplete. Using four...

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AI helps improve NASA's eyes on the Sun

Washington DC (SPX) Jul 24, 2021 A group of researchers is using artificial intelligence techniques to calibrate some of NASA's images of the Sun, helping improve the data that scientists use for solar research. The new technique was published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics on April 13, 2021. A solar telescope has a tough job....

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InSight mission: Mars unveiled

Paris, France (SPX) Jul 24, 2021 Using information obtained from around a dozen earthquakes detected on Mars by the Very Broad Band SEIS seismometer, developed in France, the international team of NASA's InSight mission has unveiled the internal structure of Mars. The three papers published on July 23, 2021 in the journal Science, involving numerous...

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The anatomy of a planet

Zurich, Switzerland (SPX) Jul 24, 2021 Since early 2019, researchers have been recording and analysing marsquakes as part of the InSight mission. This relies on a seismometer whose data acquisition and control electronics were developed at ETH Zurich. Using this data, the researchers have now measured the red planet's crust, mantle and core -...

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Insight data offers clues to Mars' deep interior, formation in solar system

Washington DC (UPI) Jul 23, 2021 Marsquake data collected by NASA's InSight lander has allowed planetary scientists to more accurately characterize Mars' deep interior, as well as offered clues to the Red Planet's origins. "Insight has confirmed that our view that Mars is a planet that was once almost entirely molten and separated into a crust,...

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