Tue, Jul 07, 2020
Curiosity Mars Rover's Summer Road Trip Has Begun
NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has started a road trip that will continue through the summer across roughly a mile (1.6 kilometers) of terrain. By trip's end, the rover will be able to ascend to the next section of the 3-mile-tall Martian (5-kilometer-tall) mountain it's been exploring since 2014, searching for conditions that may have supported ancient microbial life. Located on the floor of Gale Crater, Mount Sharp is composed of sedimentary layers that built up over time. Each layer helps tell the story about how Mars changed from being more Earth-like - with lakes, streams and a thicker atmosphere - to the nearly-airless, freezing desert it is today.
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Mon, Jul 06, 2020
Also: Great Aircraft Raffle, Cancel Culture Strikes Boeing, ABQ Balloon Fiesta Postponed, USCG Rescue
Stratos Aircraft has conducted the first flight of its Stratos 716X model - registration N716X. The flight lasted 22 minutes. Flown by test pilot Sean VanHatten, the Stratos 716X is a spacious six-place jet with generous space for baggage. The all-carbon airframe, single-engine jet is designed to cruise at 400 knots. The first flight was a full power takeoff and climb to 13,500 ft. A series of maneuvers were then conducted to evaluate handling characteristics. The flight is the first of an extensive flight test program that will span the next several months. A GA accident has taken the life of a Former Major League baseball player and three others. The aircraft went down in wooded terrain in the Granite Flats Campground Area, Box Elder Peak, Utah. The airplane, a Cessna 172M Skyhawk, N6929H, was destroyed during the accident sequence and the four occupants onboard were fatal
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Sun, Jul 05, 2020
So Much For The Cheese Theory...
What started out as a hunt for ice lurking in polar lunar craters turned into an unexpected finding that could help clear some muddy history about the Moon’s formation. Team members of the Miniature Radio Frequency (Mini-RF) instrument on NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft found new evidence that the Moon’s subsurface might be richer in metals, like iron and titanium, than researchers thought. That finding, published July 1 in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, could aid in drawing a clearer connection between Earth and the Moon. “The LRO mission and its radar instrument continue to surprise us with new insights about the origins and complexity of our nearest neighbor,” said Wes Patterson, Mini-RF principal investigator from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, and a study coauthor.
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