Twin Probes Suffer Thruster Glitch on the Way to Mercury
For more than five years, a pair of spacecraft have been traveling through the solar system to reach the innermost planet Mercury and observe its extreme conditions. During its complex…
NASA’s OSIRIS-APEX Brushes the Sun on Its Way to New Asteroid Target
New mission, who dis? The spacecraft formerly known as OSIRIS-REx had an impromptu close encounter with the Sun as it follows a newly crafted route to a second asteroid, using…
Another Lucy Bonus: Asteroid’s Surprise Moon Is Actually Two Rocks Stuck Together
The first look at the Dinkinesh asteroid revealed a surprise: The small space rock had its own moon. Now as the Lucy spacecraft downlinked more images of its first target,…
Seeing Double: Lucy’s First Target Asteroid Has a Tiny Moon
As NASA’s Lucy spacecraft zoomed past its first asteroid on Wednesday, its mission scientists made a surprising discovery of a bonus space rock. The M3 MacBook Pro: Made Dark for…
NASA’s Lucy Ready to Explore Its First Asteroid This Week
After traveling millions of miles over the past two years, the Lucy spacecraft has almost reached its first destination. NASA’s asteroid probe will briefly rendezvous with Dinkinesh in the main…
Mercury Probe Flies Through Charged Particle Rain That Triggers the Planet’s Auroras
On October 1, 2021, a pair of small spacecraft got their first good look at the closest planet to the Sun, revealing the strange process through which Mercury produces its…