by Jonathan Nally | Jul 31, 2020 | Astronomy, Planets, Space missions
NASA’S LATEST AND MOST AMBITIOUS MISSION to Mars was successfully launched in the early hours of Friday, July 31 (Sydney time), ascending on an Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Carrying a rover called...
by Jonathan Nally | Jan 14, 2020 | Amateur astronomy, Astronomy, Features, News
ECLIPSES, OPPOSITIONS, SPECTACULAR CONJUNCTIONS, a close encounter between Venus and the Pleiades and many more celestial sights await stargazers this year. Here’s our list of events to mark in your calendar. All of them are as seen from mid-latitudes in the Southern...
by Jonathan Nally | Dec 20, 2019 | News, Planets, Space missions
Above: The aeroshell and heat shield for the Mars 2020 mission. Image courtesy Lockheed Martin. The contraption in the foreground of this image looks a bit like the Jupiter 2 spaceship from the TV series Lost in Space, but it is in fact part of the aeroshell for the...
by Jonathan Nally | Feb 14, 2018 | News, Planets, Space missions
Rohit Bhartia of NASA’s Mars 2020 mission holds a slice of a meteorite scientists have determined came from Mars. One of two slices will be used for testing a laser instrument for NASA’s Mars 2020 rover while it’s still on Earth; the other slice will...
by Jonathan Nally | Feb 9, 2018 | News, Planets, Space missions
Star-shaped and swallowtail-shaped tiny, dark bumps in fine-layered bright bedrock of a Martian ridge are drawing close inspection by NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover. This set of shapes looks familiar to geologists who have studied gypsum crystals formed in drying lakes...
