Enlarge / Artist’s illustration of NASA’s Psyche spacecraft, set to launch in August 2022. The Psyche mission will explore a metal-rich asteroid of the same name that lies in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU) Ars Technica had the rare opportunity to tour NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California this week, […]
Europa could harbor complex life, and we’ll have to take care to avoid any cross-contamination. (credit: Ted Stryk/NASA) The Beresheet crash landed on Earth’s Moon in 2019. Part of the ill-fated Israeli lunar lander’s payload was a bunch of tardigrades, or “water bears.” These organisms are under a millimeter long and can survive extreme cold […]
Enlarge / While we know of locations with ice on Mars, not all of them are located in places we’d want to land. (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona) Over the last couple of decades, plans to return to the Moon for longer stays or to go to Mars have gradually moved away from sci-fi tinged “what […]