Tag Archives: nasa

The Power and Propulsion Element (PPE) of Gateway – which is planned as NASA’s orbiting outpost around the Moon, and critical infrastructure for its Artemis mission – is in the middle of several electric propulsion system tests. Nasa is highlighting the progress of the system, which is being manufactured by Maxar Technologies. Not only will it provide the Gateway platform ...

Nasa has announced that a new set of science experiments and technology demonstrations will arrive at the lunar South Pole in 2027 following the agency’s latest CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) award. Intuitive Machines, a Houston-based space exploration specialist, will receive $116.9 million to deliver six NASA payloads to a particularly difficult region of the Moon. Although the night temperatures ...

Axiom Space and Nokia are partnering to integrate advanced 4G/LTE comms into the former’s next-generation spacesuits. They are what the astronauts will be wearing when they return to the Moon as part of the Nasa mission Artemis III. The companies will work together to incorporate high-speed cellular-network capabilities in the spacesuit, which is called the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU). ...

This is what NASA’s Cold Atom Lab looks like. It’s aboard the International Space Station (ISS) and has recently demonstrated the use of a tool called an atom interferometer, the agency shares. 

Airbus will build two microwave radiometers on behalf of the French Space Agency (CNES). These will be for use on a NASA/JAXA international climate satellite mission. It will be as part of the French contribution to an Atmosphere Observing System (AOS) initiative. It is the C²OMODO mission (Convective Core Observations through MicrOwave Derivatives in the trOpics). Radiometers Specifially, the C²OMODO ...

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Earth Return Orbiter – the first spacecraft that will rendezvous and capture an object in space, to bring the first Mars samples back to Earth – has passed a key milestone. The agency says the critical design review for the spacecraft’s platform has been completed, with the involvement of European industry partners and NASA. The ...

The International Space Station (ISS) National Lab announces new funding opportunities to use its orbiting laboratory to develop, or test products and processes. The organisation is offering $750,000 for projects that have “a clear line of sight to commercial applications and demonstrate the potential to produce a positive direct or indirect economic impact” in the near term. The funding is ...

The European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA say they are consolidating their cooperation on the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin mission, reshaping what originally was a European-Russian joint mission. Both agencies have signed a new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to include important US contributions, such as the launch service, elements of the propulsion system needed for landing on Mars, and heater units ...

NASA has selected nine companies to perform initial studies of how commercial services can be applied to enable science missions to Mars. The U.S. companies will perform a total of 12 concept studies, and each will receive between $200,000 and $300,000 to produce a report on specific potential services, including payload delivery, communications relay, surface imaging, and payload hosting. “We’re ...

BAE Systems has been selected by NASA to build an atmospheric composition instrument (ACX) for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) future GeoXO constellation. The ACX is the second BAE Systems has been contracted to develop for the mission to support environmental monitoring. The instrument will help improve measurements of air quality, improve weather forecasts and help pilots ...