India has become the first nation ever to land a spacecraft near the South Pole of the Moon, as well as only the fourth nation in the world to successfully land a spacecraft on the Moon, after the US, the former Soviet Union and China. After a 19-minute descent from...
A Soyuz 2-1b/Fregat M rocket sent Russia’s Luna 25 lander, also known as the Luna-Glob, into orbit from Vostochny cosmodrome in far eastern Russia, at 2310 GMT on 10 August. The lander and the Fregat M stage were placed into an initial parking orbit of 280 x 267 km at...
An erroneous command sent to the venerable Voyager 2 spacecraft, now at the outer reaches of the solar system, inadvertently made the spacecraft move so that it tilted its antenna to point two degrees away from Earth. Communications were lost with the spacecraft –...
While Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTR) concepts (e.g. the NERVA project) have been considered for space missions since the 1960s, their lack of suitable application combined with their technical risk has held back their actual use – until now. Seeing that a...
An LVM3-2 (GSLV 3-2) rocket successfully launched the Chandrayaan-3 mission from the Sriharikota (Satish Dhawan Space Centre), India, at 0905 GMT on 14 July. The ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) mission consisted of a propulsion module, lunar lander and lunar...
SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon 9 carrying the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Euclid Telescope from Cape Canaveral, US, at 1512 GMT on 1 July. Euclid, named after a Greek mathematician known for founding the study of geometry, will spend the next month travelling...
