NASA is preparing one last blast for its expired Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft — a controlled crash into the Moon’s surface, probably on 21 April. But before it goes, LADEE will take a final shot at unraveling one of the top mysteries it went to the Moon to uncover. Read more
NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft is in deep trouble. The craft, famous for blasting a projectile into the Comet Tempel 1 in 2005, lost contact with Earth sometime between 11 August and 14 August. Recent commands to put the craft in hibernation, or safe mode, were unsuccessful and Deep Impact is now spinning out of control, says principal investigator Michael A’Hearn of the University of Maryland in College Park. The mission was renamed Epoxi when it was extended to observe comets and stars with transiting exoplanets. Read more
On Thursday Europe launched into orbit the most massive telecommunications satellite ever built on the continent. Managed by the European Space Agency and commercial operator Inmarsat, the 6.6-tonne Alphasat will relay data between different spots on the globe—using radio waves in the already crowded L-band frequency range. But it will also test out a laser communication device that could give a boost to space communications. Read more
According to a new prioritization, the Neutrino Factory, a proposed multi-billion euro facility, is the best long-term European option for testing whether neutrinos and antineutrinos behave differently, a step toward understanding why the universe contains primarily matter instead of antimatter. Read more
After a two-year, $41 million upgrade, the venerable Alvin submersible is about to return to sea. Read more
The Obama Administration announced this week that it is committing US$200-million to create three new advanced-manufacturing innovation institutes, focusing on digital manufacturing, lightweight composites and next generation power sources. Read more
In a brief 15-minute speech today, US President Barack Obama championed independence for the peer-review process, in front of an audience of elite researchers at the 150th annual meeting of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington DC. Read more
On Sunday, the Antares rocket successfully completed its maiden test flight. Launched from a new pad at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, the rocket is the largest vehicle to ever take off from the spaceport. Read more
Russia will give its Roscosmos space programme a whopping US$52 billion boost between now and 2020 in an effort to maintain its position as a leading space power. Read more
On Friday at 10:10 a.m. Eastern time, a Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida, the fifth successful launch of this model by SpaceX. Riding the rocket was an unmanned Dragon capsule that detached about ten minutes after liftoff and entered orbit, heading toward the International Space Station (ISS). Read more
