OSIRIS-REx mission to collect asteroid samples is successful

 

In case you don't know about this sample return from an asteroid, here is the basic mission. 

OSIRIS-REx will travel to a near-Earth asteroid called Bennu and bring a small sample back to Earth for study. The mission launched Sept. 8, 2016, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. As planned, the spacecraft will reach Bennu in 2018 and return a sample to Earth in 2023.

Here's the update: The space craft successfully orbited the asteroid and poked it for a collection of material to bring back to earth. This is a first for Nasa. So far, only one mission from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)—the original Hayabusa—has returned pristine samples from an asteroid to Earth.

Today, we have a video of the touchdown and it is just as cool as you would think. Check it out below.

Check out NASA's new transformative robot design for space exploration

 

Made of a pair of two-wheeled vehicles, NASA's DuAxel is designed to descend crater sides and near-vertical cliffs on the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

A rover trundles over rocky terrain, its four metal wheels clattering along until they encounter a seemingly insurmountable hazard: a steep slope. Down below is a potential trove of science targets. With a typical rover, the operators would need to find another target, but this is DuAxel, a robot built for situations exactly like this.

Check out the video below.

Nasa Will Study the Cosmos With a Stratospheric Balloon

This illustration shows a high-altitude balloon ascending into the upper atmosphere. When fully inflated, these balloons are 400 feet (150 meters) wide, or about the size of a football stadium, and reach an altitude of 130,000 feet (24.6 miles or 40 kilometers). Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab/Michael Lentz

Carried by a balloon the size of a football stadium, ASTHROS will use a cutting-edge telescope to observe wavelengths of light that aren't visible from the ground.

Work has begun on an ambitious new mission that will carry a cutting-edge 8.4-foot (2.5-meter) telescope high into the stratosphere on a balloon. Tentatively planned to launch in December 2023 from Antarctica, ASTHROS (short for Astrophysics Stratospheric Telescope for High Spectral Resolution Observations at Submillimeter-wavelengths) will spend about three weeks drifting on air currents above the icy southern continent and achieve several firsts along the way.

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Nasa to test fly helicopter on Mars

NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter will make history's first attempt at powered flight on another planet next spring. It is riding with the agency's next mission to Mars (the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover) as it launches from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station later this summer.  Perseverance, with Ingenuity attached to its belly, will land on Mars February 18, 2021. 

As a technology demonstration, Ingenuity is testing a new capability for the first time: showing controlled flight is possible in the very thin Martian atmosphere. If successful, Ingenuity could lead to an aerial dimension to space exploration, aiding both robots and humans in the future.

Check out the video below.

For more about Ingenuity, visit Nasa's site.

Space X launched humans into space for the first time in a decade

Elon Musk’s aerospace company, SpaceX, just successfully launched its first two people into orbit, ushering in a new age of human spaceflight in the United States. SpaceX is now the first company to send passengers to orbit on a privately made vehicle, and the flight marked the first time astronauts have launched into orbit from American soil in nearly a decade.