Two new satellites join the Galileo constellation
Kourou, French Guiana (ESA) Apr 02, 2015 -
The EU's Galileo satellite navigation system now has eight satellites in orbit following the launch of the latest pair. Galileo 7 and 8 lifted off at 21:46 GMT (22:46 CET, 18:46 local time) on 27 March from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana on top of a Soyuz rocket. All the Soyuz stages performed as planned, with the Fregat upper stage releasing the satellites into their target orbit close to ...
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Media Spun Up on NASA Cutting-edge Mars Landing Technology
Pasadena CA (JPL) Apr 02, 2015 -
NASA's Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) project will be flying a rocket-powered, saucer-shaped test vehicle into near-space from the Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai, Hawaii, in June.
Media were on hand at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, on March 31 to witness one of the final tests that a LDSD test vehicle will undergo before shipping out to ...
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Curiosity Eyes Prominent Mineral Veins on Mars
Pasadena CA (JPL) Apr 02, 2015 -
Two-tone mineral veins at a site NASA's Curiosity rover has reached by climbing a layered Martian mountain offer clues about multiple episodes of fluid movement. These episodes occurred later than the wet environmental conditions that formed lake-bed deposits the rover examined at the mountain's base.
Curiosity has analyzed rock samples drilled from three targets lower on the mountain in t ...
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Warm or cold? Mars' history takes a watery new twist
Moffett Field CA (SPX) Apr 02, 2015 -
A new, six-year analysis of water on Mars suggests that the Red Planet has lost the equivalent of an ocean's worth of water over the past four billion years. However, the question of whether Mars was ever warm enough to have hosted such an ocean has sparked debate.
The research, conducted using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, and supported by the WM ...
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Curiosity Sniffs Out History of Martian Atmosphere
Pasadena CA (JPL) Apr 02, 2015 -
NASA's Curiosity rover is using a new experiment to better understand the history of the Martian atmosphere by analyzing xenon. While NASA's Curiosity rover concluded its detailed examination of the rock layers of the "Pahrump Hills" in Gale Crater on Mars this winter, some members of the rover team were busy analyzing the Martian atmosphere for xenon, a heavy noble gas.
Curiosity's Sample ...
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