Stephen Clark writes via Ars Technica: When India's ambassador to the US signed up his country to the Artemis Accords last month, it signaled the world's most populous nation -- with a growing prowess in spaceflight -- could be turning toward the United States as a partner in space exploration. India became the 27th country to sign the Artemis Accords, a non-binding set of principles among like-minded nations guiding a vision for peaceful and transparent exploration of space. The accords cover the international registration of human-made space objects, the open release of scientific data, and an agreement for nations not to claim territory on the Moon or other planetary bodies, among other tenets.

Details about future cooperation between the US and India remain scarce. Nelson plans to travel to India later this year for meetings and discussions with Indian space officials. One objective of Nelson's trip will be to hammer out broad objectives for a "strategic framework" for human spaceflight cooperation. Despite the name of the Artemis Accords, there's no guarantee that India will play a significant role in NASA's Artemis program to return astronauts to the Moon and eventually send humans to Mars. "There's no implication of a signatory to the Artemis accords also being part of the Artemis program," Nelson told Ars.

But none of the other 26 signatories to the Artemis Accords -- a list that includes European space powers and Japan -- has their own human spaceflight program. India is developing a human-rated spacecraft called Gaganyaan that could be ready to fly people into low-Earth orbit in 2025, several years later than originally planned. "The fact that they are a nation that intends in the future to fly own their own astronauts, is that significant? The answer is yes," Nelson said. "I think it's of significance that a major country that's not considered aligned with the US (is) a signatory." "I've described India as a sleeping giant and one that is quickly awakening," Gold told Ars. "India is absolutely vital to global space development, and Artemis in particular, since the country is active with lunar programs, Martian programs, and now even human spaceflight." "Where India might fit into the Artemis program is still to be determined," writes Clark. "The partnership between the US and India in space could take a step forward next year with the flight of an Indian astronaut to the International Space Station. NASA has agreed to provide advanced training to Indian astronauts at the Johnson Space Center in Houston before a flight opportunity to the space station in low-Earth orbit."

India's space program has "held closer ties with Russia in the past," notes Clark. "Russia provided upper-stage engines for India's GSLV Mk.II rocket until India developed its own engine for the job. And four Indian astronauts slated for the Gaganyaan program completed more than a year of training at Russia's Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center near Moscow in 2021, according to Indian media."

"Despite India's overture toward a closer relationship with NASA, the Asian power remains linked with Russia," adds Clark. "India still imports significant amounts of Russian oil and has not officially condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine."

A new article in the Washington Post reports that even internally, "Space Force officials are still debating its priorities, analysts say: Is it to support warfighters on the ground? Or should it focus primarily on protecting assets in space? Or both?"

In April, the Washington Post reported that space would likely be a key part of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, and one possible Space Force counter-measure would "ensure that the United States avoids 'operational surprise,' by keeping track of other countries' satellites and movements in space while also being able to 'identify behaviors that become irresponsible or even hostile.'"

To address the possibility of enemies shooting down satellites, the Space Force is also "pivoting, relying on constellations of small satellites that can be easily replaced and, to an increasing degree, maneuver." That's just one example of how the Space Force intends to ensure the U.S. maintains "space superiority," as its leaders often say, to protect the satellites the Defense Department relies on for warnings of incoming missiles, steering precision-guided munitions and surveilling both friendly and hostile forces. It also could deter conflict in space — why strike a satellite if there are backups that would easily carry on the mission...?

[Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, the commander of the 45th Space Wing] gave a tour of some of the roles the Space Force could play, offering a glimpse into its future. Soldiers and Marines already pre-position supplies and equipment on the ground, he said. Could the Space Force start storing supplies in space and then fly them to hot spots on Earth as well? "In theory, we could have huge racks of stuff in orbit and then somebody can call those in, saying. 'I need X, Y, Z delivered to me now on this random island.' And then, boom, they shoot out and they parachute in and they land with GPS assistance," he said. "It's a fascinating thought exercise for emergency response — you know if a type of tidal wave or tsunami comes in and wipes out a whole area."

The military is also working to harness solar energy in space, and then beam it to ground stations. Could the Space Force use that technology to beam power to remote areas to support soldiers on the ground? Another idea: If the cadence of launches really does double or triple and the costs continue to come down, could the Space Force start using rockets to deliver cargo across the globe at a moment's notice? Soon there could be commercial space stations floating around in orbit. "Can we lease a room?" Purdy said. "Can we lease a module?"
A former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff believes the U.S. Space Force is misunderstood — at least partly because much of what it does is classified. "We fundamentally need to normalize the classification," he tells the Washington Post, "so we can have a conversation with the public, with the American people."

An anonymous reader quotes this report from the Washington Post: In a new study released in Nature this week, researchers state that Earth formed within just 3 million years. That's notably faster than previous estimates placing the timeline up to 100 million years.... "We can also predict that if other planets formed ... by the same mechanism, then the ingredients required for life such as water, should be present on other planets and other systems, so there's a greater chance that we have water worlds elsewhere in the galaxy," said Isaac Onyett, lead author of the study and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Copenhagen.

The authors assert that this rapid genesis occurred through a theory called pebble accretion. The general idea, according to co-author and cosmochemist Martin Bizzarro, is that planets are born in a disk of dust and gas. When they reach a certain size, they rapidly attract those pebbles like a vacuum cleaner. Some of those pebbles are icy and could provide a water supply to Earth, thought of as pebble snow. This would have led to an early version of our planet, known as proto-Earth, that is approximately half the size of our present-day planet. (Our current rendition of Earth likely formed after a larger impact about 100 million years later, which also led to the formation of our moon....)

The team determined the time scale of Earth's formation by looking at silicon isotopes from more than 60 meteorites and planetary bodies in the vicinity of Earth, which represent the rubble leftover after planet formation... By analyzing the silicon compositions in samples of different ages, Onyett said they can piece together a time sequence of what was happening in the disk of dust before Earth formed. They found that, as the samples increased in age, the composition of the asteroids changed toward the composition of the cosmic dust that was being accumulated by Earth. "That's very strong evidence that this dust was also being swept up as it was drifting inwards towards the Sun," said Onyett. "It would have been swept up by Earth as it was growing by accretion."

Birger Schmitz, an astrogeologist at Lund University who was not involved in the research, said these results are "very compelling" and could shift how we think about our planet's formation... Most importantly, he said the results show there is nothing special about our water-carrying planet. "It is just a very ordinary planet in our galaxy. This is important in our attempts to understand how common higher forms of life are in the universe."
While scientists agree pebble accretion does explain the formation of gas-giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn, some still argue that rocky planets like Earth were instead formed through larger and larger asteroid collisions...

Researchers have discovered high concentrations of phosphorus in ice crystals emitted from Saturn's moon Enceladus, enhancing its potential to support life. The findings, based on data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, suggest that Enceladus may possess the necessary elements for life. Reuters reports: The discovery was based on data collected by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, the first to orbit Saturn, during its 13-year landmark exploration of the gaseous giant planet, its rings and its moons from 2004 to 2017. The same team previously confirmed that Enceladus' ice grains contain a rich assortment of minerals and complex organic compounds, including the ingredients for amino acids, associated with life as scientists know it. But phosphorus, the least abundant of six chemical elements considered necessary to all living things -- the others are carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and sulphur -- was still missing from the equation until now.

"It's the first time this essential element has been discovered in an ocean beyond Earth," the study's lead author, Frank Postberg, a planetary scientist at the Free University in Berlin, said in a JPL press release. [...] One notable aspect of the latest Enceladus discovery was geochemical modeling by the study's co-authors in Europe and Japan showing that phosphorus exists in concentrations at least 100 times that of Earth's oceans, bound water-soluble forms of phosphate compounds. "This key ingredient could be abundant enough to potentially support life in Enceladus' ocean," said co-investigator Christopher Glein, a planetary scientist at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. "This is a stunning discovery for astrobiology." "Whether life could have originated in Enceladus' ocean remains an open question," Glein said.

In less than two years, NASA plans to have astronauts walking on the moon again — the first time in over half a century. "And one potential surprise could be detecting life on the moon," reports Space.com: New research suggests that future visitors to the lunar south pole region should be on the lookout for evidence of life in super-cold permanently shadowed craters — organisms that could have made the trek from Earth. Microbial life could potentially survive in the harsh conditions near the lunar south pole, suggested Prabal Saxena, a planetary researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "One of the most striking things our team has found is that, given recent research on the ranges in which certain microbial life can survive, there may be potentially habitable niches for such life in relatively protected areas on some airless bodies," Saxena told Space.com.

Indeed, the lunar south pole may possess the properties that can enable survival and potentially even episodic growth of certain microbial life, Saxena said. "We're currently working on understanding which specific organisms may be most suited for surviving in such regions and what areas of the lunar polar regions, including places of interest relevant to exploration, may be most amenable to supporting life," he said. In work presented at a recent science workshop on the potential Artemis 3 landing sites, Saxena and study members reported that the lunar south pole may contain substantial surface niches that could be potentially habitable for a number of microorganisms.
While it's possible organic molecules from earth might have been hurled to the moon after a meteor impact, there's a much more likely possibility. A NASA organic geochemist on the study views humans as "the most likely vector, given the extensive data that we have about our history of exploration..." Especially if humans start visiting these temperate radiation-protected sites...

China is planning to deploy a constellation of satellites in orbit around the moon to create a radio telescope that would enable the study of radio waves longer than 33 feet, providing insights into the "Dark Ages" of the universe. Space.com reports: The array would consist of one "mother" satellite and eight mini "daughter" craft. The mother would process data and communicate with Earth, and the daughters would detect radio signals from the farthest reaches of the cosmos, Xuelei Chen, an astronomer at the China National Space Administration (CNSA), said at the Astronomy From the Moon conference held earlier this year in London. Putting such an array in orbit around the moon would be technically more feasible than building a telescope directly on the lunar surface, a venture that NASA and other space agencies are currently considering as one of the next big steps in astronomy.

"There are a number of advantages in doing this in orbit instead of on the surface because it's engineeringly much simpler," Chen said during the conference. "There is no need for landing and a deployment, and also because the lunar orbital period is two hours, we can use solar power, which is much simpler than doing it on the lunar surface, which, if you want to observe during the lunar night, then you have to provide the energy for almost 14 days." He added that this proposed "Discovering Sky at the Longest Wavelength," or Hongmeng Project, could orbit the moon as early as 2026.

A telescope on the moon, astronomers say, would allow them to finally see cosmic radiation in a part of the electromagnetic spectrum that is impossible to study from Earth's surface: radio waves longer than 33 feet (10 meters), or, in other words, those with frequencies below 30 megahertz (MHz). "If you are looking into the low-frequency part of the electromagnetic spectrum, you'll find that, due to strong absorption [by Earth's atmosphere], we know very little about [the region] below 30 megahertz," Chen said. "It's almost a blank part of the electromagnetic spectrum. So we want to open this last electromagnetic window of the universe."

Artificial photosynthesis, inspired by the natural process that enables plants to convert sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide into oxygen and energy, could be crucial for space exploration and colonization. By using semiconductor materials and metallic catalysts, these devices could efficiently produce oxygen and recycle carbon dioxide, reducing reliance on heavy and unreliable systems currently used on the International Space Station. ScienceAlert reports: As my colleagues and I have investigated in a new paper, published in Nature Communications, recent advances in making artificial photosynthesis may well be key to surviving and thriving away from Earth. [...] We produced a theoretical framework to analyze and predict the performance of such integrated "artificial photosynthesis" devices for applications on Moon and Mars. Instead of chlorophyll, which is responsible for light absorption in plants and algae, these devices use semiconductor materials which can be coated directly with simple metallic catalysts supporting the desired chemical reaction. Our analysis shows that these devices would indeed be viable to complement existing life support technologies, such as the oxygen generator assembly employed on the ISS. This is particularly the case when combined with devices which concentrate solar energy in order to power the reactions (essentially large mirrors which focus the incoming sunlight).

There are other approaches too. For example, we can produce oxygen directly from lunar soil (regolith). But this requires high temperatures to work. Artificial photosynthesis devices, on the other hand, could operate at room temperature at pressures found on Mars and the Moon. That means they could be used directly in habitats and using water as the main resource. This is particularly interesting given the stipulated presence of ice water in the lunar Shackleton crater, which is an anticipated landing site in future lunar missions.

On Mars, the atmosphere composes of nearly 96% carbon dioxide - seemingly ideal for an artificial photosynthesis device. But the light intensity on the red planet is weaker than on Earth due to the larger distance from the Sun. So would this pose a problem? We actually calculated the sunlight intensity available on Mars. We showed that we can indeed use these devices there, although solar mirrors become even more important. [...] The returns would be huge. For example, we could actually create artificial atmospheres in space and produce chemicals we require on long-term missions, such as fertilizers, polymers, or pharmaceuticals. Additionally, the insights we gain from designing and fabricating these devices could help us meet the green energy challenge on Earth.

Nicole Carpenter, reporting for Polygon: There's a bridge to cross the lava pit in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom's Marakuguc Shrine, but it's broken. More than half of the bridge is piled on top of itself on one side of the pit, with one clipped-off segment on the other. The bridge is the obvious choice for crossing the lava, but how to fix it? A clip showing one potential solution went viral on Twitter shortly after Tears of the Kingdom's release: The player uses Link's Ultrahand ability to unfurl the stacked bridge by attaching it to a wheeled platform in the lava. When the wheeled platform -- now attached to the edge of the bridge -- activates and moves forward, it pulls the bridge taut, splashing lava as it goes, until the suspension bridge is actually suspended and can be crossed.

But it wasn't the solution itself that resonated with players; instead, the clip had game developers' jaws on the ground, in awe of how Nintendo's team wrangled the game's physics system to do that. To players, it's simply a bridge, but to game developers, it's a miracle. "The most complicated part of game development is when different systems and features start touching each other," said Shayna Moon, a technical producer who's worked on games like the 2018 God of War reboot and its sequel, God of War: Ragnarok, to Polygon. "It's really impressive. The amount of dynamic objects is why there are so many different kinds of solutions to this puzzle in particular. There are so many ways this could break."

Moon pointed toward the individual segments of the bridge that operate independently. Then there's the lava, the cart, and the fact you can use Link's Ultrahand ability to tie any of these things together -- even the bridge back onto itself. [...] Tears of the Kingdom was seemingly built on top of Breath of the Wild, reportedly with a large portion of the same team working on it. "There is a problem within the games industry where we don't value institutional knowledge," Moon said. "Companies will prioritize bringing someone from outside rather than keeping their junior or mid-level developers and training them up. We are shooting ourselves in the foot by not valuing that institutional knowledge. You can really see it in Tears of the Kingdom. It's an advancement of what made Breath of the Wild special."

"Planetary scientists now know how thick the Martian crust is," reports ScienceNews, "thanks to the strongest Marsquake ever observed." On average, the crust is between 42 and 56 kilometers thick [26 to 34 miles], researchers report in a paper to appear in Geophysical Research Letters. That's roughly 70 percent thicker than the average continental crust on Earth.

The measurement was based on data from NASA's InSight lander, a stationary seismometer that recorded waves rippling through Mars' interior for four Earth years. Last May, the entire planet shook with a magnitude 4.7 quake that lasted more than six hours. "We were really fortunate that we got this quake," says seismologist Doyeon Kim of ETH Zurich.

InSight recorded seismic waves from the quake that circled Mars up to three times. That let Kim and colleagues infer the crust thickness over the whole planet. Not only is the crust thicker than that of the Earth and the moon, but it's also inconsistent across the Red Planet, the team found. And that might explain a known north-south elevation difference on Mars.

Last month Japanese startup ispace tried to become the first private company to land a spacecraft on the moon — but in the crucial final moments lost contact with its vehicle.

Now the Associated Press reports that company officials are revealing what happened: while trying to land, their vehicle went into free-fall. Company officials blame a software issue, plus a decision in December to change the touchdown location to a crater. The crater's steep sides apparently confused the onboard software, and the 7-foot (2-meter) spacecraft went into a free-fall from less than 3 miles (5 kilometers) up, slamming into the lunar surface. The estimated speed at impact was more than 300 feet (100 meters) per second, said the company's chief technology officer, Ryo Ujiie.

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter photographed the crash site the next day as it flew overhead, revealing a field of debris as well as lunar soil hurled aside by the impact. Computer simulations done in advance of the landing attempt did not incorporate the terrain of the new landing site, Ujiie said.

CEO and founder Takeshi Hakamada said the company is still on track to attempt another moon landing in 2024, and that all the lessons learned will be incorporated into the next try. A third landing attempt is planned for 2025.

"An independent report looking into the development of NASA's new moon rocket has found significant cost overruns and delays that could harm the agency's plans to put astronauts back on the moon," reports Space.com.

Their article cites specifically "increases in costs related to contracts awarded to Aerojet Rocketdyne and Northrop Grumman for SLS's propulsion systems," citing a 50-page report published Thursday by NASA's Inspector General: Altogether, the four contracts for the rocket's booster and engine were initially projected to cost $7 billion over a span of 14 years, but are now projected to cost at least $13.1 billion over nearly 25 years. "NASA continues to experience significant scope growth, cost increases, and schedule delays on its booster and RS-25 engine contracts, resulting in approximately $6 billion in cost increases and over 6 years in schedule delays above NASA's original projections," the report found.

These significant increases were caused by a variety of long-standing, interrelated management issues impacting both the SLS development campaign and the wider Artemis program, the report notes, including "some of which represent potential violations of federal contracting requirements." The use of heritage RS-25 engines and boosters from the space shuttle and Constellation programs for the new SLS rocket was intended to bring significant cost and schedule savings over developing new systems. But the "complexity of developing, updating, and integrating new systems along with heritage components proved to be much greater than anticipated," according to the report.

To remedy this, the report makes a number of recommendations to NASA management to increase transparency, accountability and affordability of the SLS booster and engine contracts, including switching from "cost-plus" awards towards a fixed-price contract structure. However, the assessment still finds the enormous cost of SLS hard to manage for NASA and damaging to its long term "Moon to Mars" plans. "Without greater attention to these important safeguards, NASA and its contracts will continue to exceed planned cost and schedule, resulting in a reduced availability of funds, delayed launches, and the erosion of the public's trust in the Agency's ability to responsibly spend taxpayer money and meet mission goals and objectives — including returning humans safely to the moon and onward to Mars."
Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shared the article along with a YouTube video with excerpts from recently released high-resolution video of the rocket's last launch.

Space experts convened in Washington DC for 2023's "Humans to Mars Summit," reports Vice, where one panel explored civil engineering and construction on the moon and Mars. Melodie Yasher, who serves as vice president of building design and performance at ICON, previewed her company's vision of lunar infrastructure based on 3D-printing and additive manufacturing technologies... "We're looking into how to create, first, horizontal construction elements such as landing pads and roadways, and then eventually thinking about how we can develop vertical construction elements" such as "unpressurized structures and eventually, habitats that are pressurized and certified for human occupancy," she added. ICON plans to use lunar dirt, known as regolith, as a resource to manufacture a wide range of infrastructure projects on the Moon with a single robotic 3D-printing system. In 2022, the company won a $57.2 million Small Business Innovation Research contract from NASA to develop its lunar construction techniques...

Later in the same panel, Sam Ximenes, founder and CEO of XArc Exploration Architecture Corporation, also offered a sneak peek of the lunar technologies in development at the XArc subsidiary Astroport. Ximenes and his colleagues at Astroport are focused on making Moon bricks out of lunar regolith that can be used to construct landing pads, as part of their "Lunatron" bricklayer vision... Astroport is working with researchers at the University of Texas, San Antonio, to invent an induction furnace nozzle that heats up lunar regolith so that it can melt, then solidify, into bricks. A number of specialized robots would then assemble the materials into landing pads that can accommodate robotic and crewed missions to the Moon's surface. In addition to the company's work on lunar technologies, it has also created concepts for future human missions to Mars.

NASA has selected Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin to create a lunar lander for an upcoming Artemis mission, with a $3.4 billion contract including an uncrewed "demonstration mission" followed by a human-crewed demo in 2029 for the Artemis V mission. The Verge reports: Currently, the plan for the Artemis V mission is for four astronauts to first fly to the Gateway space station on NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion spacecraft. Then, two astronauts will go to the Moon on Blue Origin's Blue Moon lander for "about a weeklong trip to the Moon's South Pole region," NASA said. Blue Origin is the second company to land a contract with NASA for a lunar lander for Artemis. SpaceX was the first, winning the sole contract in 2021, and Blue Origin lost a lawsuit against NASA over the decision later that year. However, NASA announced in 2022 that it would develop a second human lunar lander, inviting space companies to make proposals. "Adding another human landing system partner to NASA's Artemis program will increase competition, reduce costs to taxpayers, support a regular cadence of lunar landings, further invest in the lunar economy, and help NASA achieve its goals on and around the Moon in preparation for future astronaut missions to Mars," NASA said.

"Astronomers have discovered 62 new moons orbiting the ringed planet Saturn," reports Space.com.

So while Jupiter remains the largest planet orbiting our sun — and shaped our solar system with its gravitational bulk — nonetheless the New York Times reports that "the fight over which planet has the most moons in its orbit has swung decisively in Saturn's favor." This month, the International Astronomical Union is set to recognize 62 additional moons of Saturn based on a batch of objects discovered by astronomers. The small objects will give Saturn 145 moons — eclipsing Jupiter's total of 95. "They both have many, many moons," said Scott Sheppard, an astronomer from the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C. But Saturn "appears to have significantly more," he said, for reasons that are not entirely understood.

The newly discovered moons of Saturn are nothing like the bright object in Earth's night sky. They are irregularly shaped, like potatoes, and no more than one or two miles across. They orbit far from the planet too, between six million and 18 million miles, compared with larger moons, like Titan, that mostly orbit within a million miles of Saturn. Yet these small irregular moons are fascinating in their own right. They are mostly clumped together in groups, and they may be remnants of larger moons [150 miles across] that shattered while orbiting Saturn. [The article suggests later they may have been destroyed by collisions with other moons, or by impacts from asteroids or comets.]

"These moons are pretty key to understanding some of the big questions about the solar system," said Bonnie Buratti of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and the deputy project scientist on the upcoming Europa Clipper mission to Jupiter. "They have the fingerprints of events that took place in the early solar system."

The growing number of moons also highlights potential debates over what constitutes a moon. "The simple definition of a moon is that it's an object that orbits a planet," Dr. Sheppard said. An object's size, for the moment, doesn't matter.
The leader of one moon-discovering group told the Times there's "potentially thousands" of moons around Saturn and Jupiter.

And at least a few of the moons are circling Saturn in the opposite direction...

An anonymous reader shares a report: In recent decades, NASA has sent large spacecraft -- Galileo and Cassini, respectively -- to fly around Jupiter and Venus to explore the dozens of moons that exist in those planetary systems. The spacecraft investigated all manner of intriguing moons, from little radiation-saturated hellholes to a world covered in volcanoes. But the most consistently interesting discovery made by these probes was that Jupiter and Venus are surrounded by small and large moons covered in ice, possessing large water oceans below, or both. This was exciting because where there is water in its liquid state, there is the possibility of life.

In response to these discoveries, NASA is planning to launch a mission to Europa, an ice-encrusted moon in the Jovian system, as early as 2024. Another mission may launch to Saturn's moon Titan a few years later, where there are oceans of liquid methane on the surface. And just last month, the European Space Agency launched a spacecraft, Juice, to explore several icy moons at Jupiter. Now, NASA may need to add the moons of Uranus to its exploration hit list. Besides being known for its funny name and its brilliant cyan shade, Uranus has at least 27 moons. And they're pretty intriguing, too. The space agency has only ever flown one spacecraft, Voyager 2, by the seventh planet in our Solar System. The Voyager spacecraft flew by Uranus a long time ago, in 1985. But in light of the discoveries made by the Cassini, Dawn, and New Horizons spacecraft, scientists have been revisiting the data collected by Voyager in addition to the data obtained by ground-based telescopes. This has led NASA scientists to conclude that four of Uranus' largest moons -- Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, and Oberon -- probably contain water oceans below their icy crusts. These oceans are likely dozens of kilometers deep and probably fairly salty in being sandwiched between the upper ice and inner rock core.

The European Space Agency appears to have a slight problem: a critical antenna is jammed on their Jupiter-bound spacecraft launched two weeks ago. From the Associated Press: The 52-foot (16-meter) radar antenna on Juice unfolded only one-third of the way following liftoff, according to the space agency. Engineers suspect a tiny pin may be protruding. Flight controllers in Germany plan to fire the spacecraft's engine in hopes of shaking the pin loose. If that doesn't work, they said they have plenty of time to solve the problem.

Juice, short for Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, won't reach the giant planet until 2031. It's taking a roundabout path to get there, including gravity-assist flybys of Earth and our moon, and Venus. The radar antenna is needed to peer beneath the icy crust of three Jupiter moons suspected of harboring underground oceans and possibly life, a major goal of the nearly $1.8 billion mission. Its targets include Callisto, Europa and Ganymede, the largest moon in the solar system.

Japanese startup ispace assumed failure in its attempt to make the first private moon landing on Tuesday as engineers struggled to regain contact with the company's Hakuto-R Mission 1 (M1) lander long after it was due for a lunar touchdown. From a report: "We lost the communication, so we have to assume that we could not complete the landing on the lunar surface," ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada said on a company live stream, as mission control engineers in Tokyo continued to try regaining contact with the lander. The M1 lander appeared set to touch down around 12:40 p.m. Eastern time (1640 GMT Tuesday) after coming as close as 295 feet from the lunar surface, a live animation of the lander's telemtry showed.

SpaceX on Thursday launched its next-generation Starship cruise vehicle for the first time atop the company's powerful new Super Heavy booster rocket, in a highly anticipated, uncrewed test flight from the Gulf Coast of Texas. From a report: The two-stage rocketship, standing taller than the Statue of Liberty at 394 feet (120 m) high, blasted off from the company's Starbase spaceport and test facility east of Brownsville, Texas, on a planned 90-minute debut flight into space. A live SpaceX webcast of the lift-off showed the rocketship rising from the launch tower into the morning sky as the Super Heavy's 33 raptor engines roared to life in a ball of flame and billowing clouds of exhaust and water vapor. Getting the Starship and its booster rocket off the ground together for the first time represents a milestone in SpaceX's ambition of sending humans back to the moon and ultimately on to Mars - playing a pivotal role in Artemis, NASA's newly inaugurated human spaceflight program.

A historic mission to Jupiter is about to blast off. The European Space Agency's spacecraft nicknamed Juice -- for Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer -- is set to begin an eight-year journey toward the planet and three of its largest moons. From a report: Juice is scheduled to launch Friday morning Eastern Time from a spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, after an earlier attempt was scrubbed because of lightning risk. Once it arrives at Jupiter, Juice will study some of the moons in great detail, mapping their icy surfaces and searching for subsurface oceans that could harbor life.

While the spacecraft can't detect life, the mission should help confirm whether the moons -- Europa, Callisto and Ganymede -- have the conditions necessary to sustain life. The trio, along with the volcanically active moon Io, were discovered by Galileo more than four centuries ago and are among the nearly 100 moons orbiting Jupiter, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. About half an hour after its launch, which will be livestreamed Friday, Juice will separate from its rocket and make contact with mission controllers on Earth. The solar-powered spacecraft will then deploy solar wings that measure roughly 900 square-feet and expand into a cross-like configuration on both sides of the craft. In the following 17 days, Juice is expected to deploy its antennas and instrument-containing booms and begin its cosmic sojourn, which people can follow on the agency's website.

The journey will be a roundabout one. Juice will complete flybys of Earth, the moon, and Venus over the next six years to adjust its trajectory and gain enough speed to get to Jupiter. Jupiter is, on average, about 444 million miles from Earth, yet Juice will travel nearly 4 billion miles before getting there, according to Mr. Sarri. It will also have to withstand temperatures from close to 500 degrees Fahrenheit around Venus to nearly minus 400 degrees Fahrenheit at Jupiter. If all goes well, Juice is scheduled to arrive at Jupiter by July 2031. Once there, the craft will complete flybys of the three moons before entering Ganymede's orbit to collect further data, which are sent back to Earth using an 8-foot antenna.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Red sand shifts under the boots of the crew members. In the distance, it appears that a rocky mountain range is rising out of the Martian horizon. A thin layer of red dust coats the solar panels and equipment necessary for the year-long mission. This landscape isn't actually 145m miles away. We are in a corner of the Nasa Johnson Space Center in Houston, in a large white warehouse right next to the disc golf course and on the tram route for tourists and school groups. But starting this June, four volunteer test subjects will spend a year locked inside, pretending to live on Mars. Nasa researchers say they're doing everything they can to make it as realistic as possible so they can learn the impact that a year in isolation with limited resources has on human health. "As we move from low Earth orbit, from moon to Mars, we're going to have a lot more resource restrictions than we have on the International Space Station and we're going to be a lot further from Earth or any help from Earth," said Dr Grace Douglas, the principal investigator for the Crew Health Performance Exploration Analog, or Chapea for short.

The four crew members will live in a small housing unit that was constructed using a huge 3D printer to simulate how Nasa may create structures on the Martian surface with Martian soil. They'll conduct experiments, grow food and exercise -- and be tested regularly so scientists can learn what a year on Mars could do to the body and mind. "This is really an extreme circumstance," said Dr Suzanne Bell, who leads the Behavioral Health and Performance Laboratory at the Nasa Johnson Space Center. "You're asking for individuals to live and work together for over a one-year period. Not only will they have to get along well, but they'll also have to perform well together."

Watching four people spend a year in a 3D-printed box is Nasa's next small step toward landing humans on the surface of Mars. Nasa says it hopes to send humans to the red planet as early as the 2030s. The first mission could be a nine-month trip one-way, and could leave the astronauts on the surface for two and a half years before starting the long trip back home. Preparations for that trek are already well under way with the agency's Artemis program. Artemis is sending astronauts back to the Moon for the first time since 1972, including the first person of color and woman to walk on another celestial body. As part of the Artemis missions, Nasa is also launching Gateway, a space station that will orbit the Moon and serve as a pit stop for Mars-bound missions. Getting to the Moon means getting to Mars, and getting to Mars means testing the physical and behavioral health of a crew in isolation. That's where Chapea comes in.