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Added on the 23/06/2019 13:31:52 - Copyright : Wochit
A NASA spacecraft blasts off from the Kennedy Space Center bound for Psyche, a metal-rich asteroid that could be the remnants of a small planet, or perhaps a new type of celestial body unknown to science. Trailing a blue glow from its next-generation electric propulsion system and flanked by two large solar arrays, the van-sized probe should arrive at its destination in the Asteroid Belt, between Mars and Jupiter, in July 2029. IMAGES
A sample of rock and dust retrieved from the asteroid Bennu contains water and carbon molecules, both building blocks for life as we know it, NASA chief Bill Nelson says. SOUNDBITE
A space capsule carrying the International Space Station (ISS) crew of Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev, Dmitri Petelin and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, lands on the Earth's surface in Kazakhstan. IMAGES
US NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara and Russian Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub, members of the International Space Station (ISS) Expedition 70-71 main crew, bid farewell to their relatives and visitors gathered ahead of the launch from the Russian leased Baikonur facility, in Kazakhstan. IMAGES
The Artemis program marks the first step in the new era of human exploration. Together with commercial and international partners like JAXA, NASA hopes to establish a sustainable presence on the Moon to launch missions to Mars. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) and Toyota are also contributing to the programme. MHI will do so through the development of the LUPEX – acronym in English for the Lunar Polar Expedition – and Toyota through the joint development of a manned lunar rover with JAXA. With this "Lunar Cruiser", Toyota hopes to apply the honed technologies used in the extreme conditions of the Moon on Earth.
NASA unveils its Orion spacecraft for the Artemis 2 space mission, at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral in Florida. The mission scheduled for late 2024, will take a crew of four astronauts to the Moon. IMAGES