NASA selected two new missions to form part of its Discovery programme on 2 June. These missions lie on the smaller end of the scale for NASA, but will still be funded to the tune of US$500 million each. The winning candidates have been in competition since 2019 when...
On 19 May Firefly Aerospace contracted SpaceX to launch its Blue Ghost lunar lander mission, planned for 2023. SpaceX will utilise its Falcon 9 launch vehicle for the mission. Firefly is developing the Blue Ghost lander as part of the NASA CLPS (Commercial Lunar...
Mars is now the red planet in more than one way: on 14 May, China successfully landed its Zhurong rover in a dune field in Utopia Planitia. This is significant because it marks China as the third nation to land a spacecraft on Mars, and only the second to make a...
Ingenuity – part of NASA’s Mars 2020 mission – made the first powered, controlled flight on another planet at 0730 GMT on 19 April. The 2 kg solar-powered drone helicopter, which had been deployed on the Martian surface by the Mars rover Perseverence, managed to...
As Elon Musk had hinted on his Twitter feed, NASA formally announced on 26 April that it had selected SpaceX to provide a Human Landing System (HLS) for its Artemis Programme. The US$2.89 billion contract covers the development of the lander and a demonstration...
Astrobotic has selected SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket to fly its first GRIFFIN lunar lander to the Moon. This is the first mission for its larger lander product – its smaller PEREGRINE lander is due to fly this year. The GRIFFIN mission is planned to launch...
