ESA has given the green light to launch a mission designed to make the first flyby of a comet visiting the inner solar system for the first time. The "Comet Interceptor" mission will be set in a standby orbit, where it will wait for the discovery of an incoming comet to intercept.
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NASA has given its approval to begin construction of a spacecraft that will one day explore the metallic asteroid Psyche, which may represent the exposed metallic core of what was once a Mars-sized planet.
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If you thought SpaceX launching 60 Starlink satellites at once was impressive, Cornell University managed 105 small satellites. The ChipSats, called Sprites, forming a swarm of cracker-sized nanosatellites were deployed from the Kicksat-2 CubeSat on March 18, 2019 at an altitude of 300 km (186 mi).
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Almost 50 years to the day since Neil Armstrong uttered the words "the Eagle has landed" Lego will launch its Eagle Lunar Module set to celebrate the anniversary. Developed in cooperation with NASA, the set will be available from June 1 at a price of just under US$100.
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Today, we take it for granted that the Apollo lunar landing was possible, but at the time, no one had done anything remotely like it – let alone in a craft that had never been fully tested.
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ESA has now detailed the side mission it’s planning for the asteroid-visiting spacecraft Hera. After the main work is complete, the probe will test out some new autonomous navigation systems, which should help future spacecraft get around without relying on ground control all the way back on Earth.
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ESA's CHaracterising ExOPlanets Satellite (CHEOPS) has been declared flight ready and is being stored at the Airbus Defence and Space facility in Madrid before being shipped to Kourou, French Guiana, where it will be installed atop a Soyuz-Fregat rocket.
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The Van Allen Probes have been set on a trajectory that will plunge the radiation belt satellites into the Earth's atmosphere. In order to keep the pair of spacecraft from becoming a hazard to navigation, a series of thruster maneuvers will place them in ever-tightening orbits ending around 2034.
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The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has released footage of the Hayabusa 2 spacecraft descending and making contact with the primordial asteroid Ryugu. During the rendezvous, the probe shot a bullet into the surface to kick up a sample for return to Earth sometime late in 2020.
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Radio waves are still the main way to communicate with spacecraft, but that aging technology could soon get an upgrade that will allow faster data downloads from space. NASA is currently preparing to test out an x-ray communication system on the International Space Station.
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