News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
It’s been a full year since the United Arab Emirates made history when its first-ever interplanetary mission slipped into orbit around Mars. The Emirates Mars Mission, also called Hope, launched in July 2020, arrived at the Red Planet seven months later and successfully entered orbit around Mars on Feb. 9, 2021. After a few months … Read more
NASA says it plans to plunge the vestiges of the International Space Station (ISS) into a remote part of the Pacific Ocean known as Point Nemo in early 2031, after passing the baton to commercial space stations. In an updated transition report just delivered to Congress, the space agency detailed the endgame for the space station, which … Read more
The International Space Station’s final nine years are going to be busy. NASA just released a report outlining the big-picture goals for the rest of the orbiting lab’s operational life, which is expected to end with a controlled deorbit in January 2031. These goals are: enabling deep-space exploration, conducting research to benefit humanity, inspiring our species to … Read more
A pioneering space junk cleanup test is on hold for now. Astroscale has suspended its ELSA-d demonstration mission in Earth orbit after detecting “anomalous spacecraft conditions,” the Japanese startup announced on Twitter Wednesday (Jan. 26). ELSA-d (“End-of-Life Services by Astroscale demonstration”) launched to Earth orbit in March 2021 to test tech for capturing space debris, … Read more
Three months after launch, a new NASA asteroid spacecraft is still getting settled into its life beyond Earth. NASA’s Lucy mission launched Oct. 16 with a mission to explore the Trojan asteroids, which orbit the sun ahead of and behind Jupiter. No spacecraft has ever visited the Trojan asteroids, which scientists believe are “fossils” from … Read more
The pathway to humans on Mars lies through the atom, split. Far from Earth, whether in the void or on another world, power is life. A steady, strong flow of electricity is as crucial for operating computers and engines as it is for assuring access to corporeal necessities such as light and heat, breathable air … Read more
The drive from Kennedy Space Center’s Visitor Complex to the launch facilities that line the Atlantic coast offers spectators a beautiful glimpse into American innovation: the gargantuan Blue Origin facility, the SpaceX landing zones and multiple NASA launch complexes. It’s on this path that the now-deserted Launch Complex 34 sits, “ABANDON IN PLACE” spray-painted in … Read more
Could we send a spacecraft to the giant, cigar-shaped interstellar interloper ‘Oumuamua? Should we? In 2017, astronomers detected a space rock from another solar system whizzing through our cosmic neighborhood for the first time ever. The rock, called ‘Oumuamua, passed us by and sailed through our solar system leaving behind questions that remain to this … Read more
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has just reached its final destination—around a gravitationally special spot in space known as the second Lagrange point, or L2. The US$10-billion observatory could spend 20 or more years there, gathering unprecedented insights about the Universe as it stares into deep space. Webb, which is the most complex telescope ever … Read more
On Christmas morning of 2021, astronomers watched their new, greatest tool successfully blast off into space. Now the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is fully deployed and has arrived at its deep-space destination, a quiet locale 1.5 million kilometers beyond Earth. Massimo Stiavelli heads the JWST Mission Office at the institute that allocates research time … Read more