nasa
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NASA Confronts Looming Gap in Human Space Missions as ISS Retirement Draws Near
As the International Space Station (ISS) nears the end of its service in low Earth orbit, NASA is grappling with the idea of a short-term gap until a commercial alternative takes its place. This week, NASA officials discussed the possibility of not being able to maintain human presence in low Earth orbit as the space…
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NASA Probe Transmits Groundbreaking Laser Message From 10 Million Miles Away
A gold-capped laser transceiver attached to the asteroid probe Psyche saw its first light on Tuesday, sending and receiving data through laser beams from far beyond the Moon for the first time. NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment beamed data encoded within a near-infrared laser from nearly 10 million miles in deep space (16…
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NASA ‘Pauses’ Mars Sample Return to Get a Grip on the Mission
NASA is pulling back from its Mars Sample Return program (MSR) in order to develop a revised way of bringing the Martian rocks back to Earth after its original plan was deemed unrealistic. During a meeting of the Planetary Science Advisory Committee on Monday, NASA officials announced that the space agency is pausing work on…
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NASA-Funded Mission to the Moon’s Far Side Is Starting to Look Pretty Cool
Firefly Aerospace’s upcoming visit to the Moon’s far side will now include SPIDER—a device for probing the lunar subsurface.