Two new studies have possibly identified regions on the Moon’s surface that could contain pieces of the lunar mantle, which would be possible sample targets for the Artemis mission. Plus, Venus gets a double flyby next week, and it’s all about asteroids and meteor showers in this week’s What’s Up.
On this week’s Rocket Roundup, China launches another military satellite, Rocket Lab and Arianespace return to flight, and a Chinese private rocket fails. Plus, this week in rocket history, we look back at the first time two crewed spacecraft from the same country were in orbit at the same time.
Last year’s announcement that water ice had been found on the dayside of the Moon by the SOFIA observatory prompted scientists to understand just why that could work, and they found that the Moon’s rough surface creates frost pockets. Plus, all the climate change news over the millennia (Pamela’s back, everyone!).
Continuing the ongoing saga of just what is under the Martian south polar ice caps, new research has once again analyzed radar data, and this time, scientists find that clays known as smectites are responsible for the bright reflections once thought to be subsurface lakes. Plus, drama with an ISS docking and some more oddball exoplanets to round out the week.
For this week’s Rocket Roundup, we have exactly zero launches to cover. What’s up with that? In the meantime, we talk about Europa Clipper’s launch announcement, Blue Origin’s attempt to be a part of Artemis, what a NOTAM is, and how we use it. Plus, this week in rocket history, we look back at the launch of the Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Scientists analyzed archival data from the Hubble Space Telescope and found evidence of water vapor in the atmosphere of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede. The water vapor is present due to thermal escape from the icy surface of the moon. Plus, a “fizzled” gamma-ray burst and all the exoplanets!
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