Articles by Stephen Clark

NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter safely landed after wobbling, suffering power spikes, and enduring velocity fluctuations on its sixth flight at Mars.

The Emirates Mars Mission, the first deep space probe from the Arab world, is set to swing into orbit around the Red Planet on Tuesday to cap a 494 million-kilometre, 205-day interplanetary voyage from Earth and begin a science mission studying the Martian climate. The critical Mars Orbit Insertion manoeuvre is scheduled to begin at 1530 GMT.

Japanese space agency officials said they found a “large number” of pitch black rock and dust particles after opening a capsule returned to Earth earlier this month by the Hayabusa 2 mission, giving eager scientists their first significant specimens ever brought back from an asteroid.

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has begun its descent toward a touch and go landing on asteroid Bennu at 11:12 p.m. BST (2212 GMT) Tuesday. The craft will attempt to collect samples from the asteroid’s gravely surface for return to Earth in 2023 for scientists to search for clues about the origins and evolution of the Solar System.

Launches of interplanetary missions can only depart Earth when the positions of the planets are just right, and officials managing the development of probes set for launch in 2021 and 2022 to explore asteroids and Jupiter says construction milestones and reviews are proceeding to keep the projects on schedule despite the coronavirus pandemic.