Tag Archives: spacecraft

NASA wants to use the sun to power future deep space missions

While other spacecraft, like Lucy, have used solar energy to operate instruments, Psyche will be among the first of NASA’s deep-space missions to use solar energy for both onboard operations and propulsion.  Paulo Lozano, director of MIT’s space propulsion laboratory, says Psyche could lay the groundwork for more solar-powered space exploration. Eventually, the technology could help us investigate multiple celestial objects for longer periods […]

This NASA spacecraft is on its way to Jupiter’s mysterious asteroid swarms

Lucy will take black-and-white and color images, and use a diamond beam splitter to shine far-infrared light at the asteroids to take their temperature and make maps of their surface. It will also collect other measurements as it flies by. This data could help scientists understand how the planets may have formed. Sarah Dodson-Robinson, an […]

The moon didn’t die as early as we thought

Using isotope dating and a technique based on lunar crater chronology, which involves estimating the age of an object in space in part by counting the craters on its surface, the team determined that lava flowed in Oceanus Procellarum as recently as 2 billion years ago.   Chang’e 5 was China’s first lunar sample-return mission and the first probe to bring […]