On October 24, 2019, NASA has published a new selfie of the Curiosity Mars Rover, which was taken on October 11, the 2,553rd Martian day, or sol, of the rover’s mission. The space agency has also announced that Curiosity’s successor, the Mars 2020 Rover now stands on its own six wheels.
On October 18, 2019, NASA held an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit. Scientists from the space agency answered questions about Van Allen Probes, two robotic spacecraft that were used to study the Van Allen radiation belts that surround planet Earth.
I am one of the few African-American aerospace engineers who helped design the Apollo spaceships that took men to the Moon. My great-grandfather was a slave in Claiborne, Alabama, who used primitive tools to work the land. My father was born in Alabama before the Wright brothers made mankind’s first flight. He lived to see men walk on the Moon, twin robotic biology labs land on Mars, and a fleet of four space probes on their way to the stars. But many black people, like the late Reverend Ralph Abernathy, felt that the money used to make these amazing things happen would have been better spent on helping the poorest descendants of American slaves.
NASA has published a video showing Curiosity Rover‘s (Mars Science Laboratory) proposed route on Mars’ Mount Sharp (Aeolis Mons), a mountain rising 5.5 km (18,000 ft) high from the valley floor. The animated video shows what it would be like to soar over Mount Sharp, officially Aeolis Mons, which the Curiosity has been climbing since 2014.
NASA’s Mars InSight lander captured a series of sunrise, sunset, and cloud images. On April 24 and 25, 2019 (the 145th Martian day, or sol, of the mission), Instrument Deployment Camera (IDC) on the spacecraft’s robotic arm captured sunrise and sunsets.
Another camera, called Instrument Context Camera (ICC) beneath the lander’s deck captured drifting clouds across the Martian sky at sunset.
In March 2019, NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover captured two solar eclipses created by each of the planet’s tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos.
Before going silent due to a huge dust storm on June 10, 2018, NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity documented an amazing 360-degree panorama from multiple images taken at what would become its final resting spot in Perseverance Valley. The Mars rover collected these images over the course of 29 days.
Since the launch of the first artificial Earth satellite, Sputnik 1, on October 4, 1957, we launched thousands of spacecraft into Earth orbit and beyond. A fraction of them are still functioning, but what happened to the vast majority of them? “The Curious Droid” published another informative video titled “What happens to old spacecraft?”
NASA’s InSight lander has started providing a daily Mars weather report everyone can see. The American space agency has created a dedicated web page on the NASA InSight mission website to share that information.
This chart, prepared by NASA illustrates comparisons among the driving distances by various wheeled vehicles on the surface of the planetary bodies other than Earth (as of February 13, 2019, only the Moon and Mars). Opportunity rover, which declared dead after record-breaking 15-years on the Martian surface also holds the off-Earth roving distance record after accruing 45.16 kilometers (28.06 miles) of driving on Mars.