SpaceExplorer

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, launched June 18 from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, has beamed back its first pictures of the moon as engineers continue instrument checkout and calibration prior to the start of its primary mission.

The LRO spacecraft braked into a highly elliptical orbit around the moon June 23. A series of rocket firings have now placed the satellite in its so-called commissioning orbit, one with a low point of about 19 miles and a high point of 124 miles. Later this summer, it will be maneuvered into a circular 31-mile-high orbit around the moon's poles.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, or LROC, was turned on June 30. The first test images showed cratered terrain in the lunar highlands south of the Sea of Clouds. Each picture represents a square measuring 0.87 miles wide.… Read more

Four-and-a-half days after launch, NASA's $504 million Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter fired its main thrusters for 40 minutes early Tuesday, successfully braking into an initially elliptical orbit around the moon.

The critical rocket firing began around 5:47 a.m. EDT and ended as planned at 6:27 a.m., putting the spacecraft into an orbit tilted 30 degrees from the moon's poles with a low point of 136 miles and a high point of 1,926 miles.

"All stations, this is flight," said lead flight director Rick Saylor. "Congratulations on a successful LOI (lunar orbit … Read more

An Atlas 5 rocket thundered to life and streaked into space Thursday, hurling two NASA spacecraft toward the moon for a $583 million mission to scout out landing sites for future manned missions and to search for evidence of hidden ice near its frigid poles.

One spacecraft will map the cratered surface from a perilously low 31-mile-high orbit while the other will blast out 350 tons of pulverized rock and soil for chemical analysis, digging a shallow 66-foot-wide crater in a kamikaze crash visible from Earth.

"First, we want to identify safe landing sites," said project scientist Rich … Read more

In the vastness of the universe, there are likely to be nearly countless planets. The big question for humans, of course, is whether even a single one of them could support life.

NASA's Kepler satellite, which is scheduled to lift off at 10:49 p.m. EST tonight, is headed out to keep watch on a patch of the Milky Way for at least three and a half years. Unlike the Hubble space telescope, Kepler won't be taking brilliant pictures suitable for framing. Instead, it will look for minute changes in the brightness of stars--some 100,000 of … Read more

A privately developed rocket is now orbiting the Earth.

Space Exploration Technologies' Falcon 1 launched into orbit at 4:15 p.m. PDT Sunday from Omelek Island, which is in the Kwajalein Atoll, about 2,500 miles southwest of Hawaii. Just over nine minutes later, the Falcon 1 reached orbit, the company said.

The successful launch comes after the company, better known as SpaceX, had suffered three unsuccessful attempts over the past two years.

Elon Musk, the company's founder and CEO, called the launch a "great day for SpaceX."

"The data shows we achieved a super … Read more

The Phoenix Mars Lander's robotic arm touched the planet's terrain for the first time on Saturday.

The effort, which came seven days after the lander touched down, is part of NASA's efforts to scoop up Red Planet specimens for experiments on the lander.

A behemoth "footprint" was left behind by the robotic arm's touch in the King of Hearts area of Mars. The mark, which was captured by the camera attached to the lander, looks like it could have been made by the mythological Himalayan snowman. In reference to this, NASA dubbed the impression … Read more

That's a relief. It turns out that fellow Craver Josh Lowensohn really did have a legitimate reason for all those sudden gestures at his desk.

As it turns out, it was all born from an enthusiasm for virtual-reality gear made by 3Dconnexion that's apparently well founded: A higher-end version of the mouse he wrote about last May has been awarded this year's iF Product Design Award at the CeBit trade show in Hanover, Germany, "in recognition for its ergonomic and innovative design." The manufacturer, which is a subsidiary of Logitech, says the "SpaceExplorer" … Read more

NASA said Tuesday that it plans to establish a new lunar science institute, in the hopes of laying the groundwork for future missions to the moon.

Called the NASA Lunar Science Institute (NLSI), the institute will open March 1, 2008, at NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, but it will draw on work from teams across the country. (Ames similarly runs the distributed Astrobiology Institute.) The goal is to build an interdisciplinary study of the moon, building on other scientific research products funded by NASA.

NASA plans to form four or five teams to research areas including lunar science … Read more

LOS ANGELES--The Google Lunar X Prize, a robotic race to the moon, has drawn its first contestant.

Not even an hour after the prize was announced here Thursday at the Wired NextFest, Carnegie Mellon University robotics pioneer Red Whittaker said he's putting together a team to build a rover that can snag the $20 million prize. To win the $20 million, a robotic rover must land on the moon, travel 500 meters and send data and video back to Earth by 2012. The total prize money is $30 million, including $5 million for second place and another $5 million … Read more