http://phys.org/space-news/space-exploration/ en-us Phys.Org provides the latest news on space, space exploration, space science and earth sciences. (Phys.org) —A team of researchers from the SETI Institute, the Mars Institute, NASA Ames Research Center, and the space robotics company Honeybee Robotics, has successfully completed a first series of field tests aimed at investigating how humans will explore and work on Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs) and eventually the two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos. http://phys.org/news288076223.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Sat, 18 May 2013 07:00:01 EST news288076223 (Phys.org) —NASA's senior Mars rover, Opportunity, is driving to a new study area after a dramatic finish to 20 months on "Cape York" with examination of a rock intensely altered by water. http://phys.org/news288075812.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Sat, 18 May 2013 06:04:53 EST news288075812 While Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt visited Earth's moon for three days in December 1972, they drove their mission's Lunar Roving Vehicle 19.3 nautical miles (22.210 statute miles or 35.744 kilometers). That was the farthest total distance for any NASA vehicle driving on a world other than Earth until yesterday. http://phys.org/news287997302.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Fri, 17 May 2013 08:30:03 EST news287997302 For the past 8 years, NASA astronomers have been monitoring the Moon for signs of explosions caused by meteoroids hitting the lunar surface. "Lunar meteor showers" have turned out to be more common than anyone expected, with hundreds of detectable impacts occurring every year. http://phys.org/news287995775.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Fri, 17 May 2013 07:49:49 EST news287995775 (Phys.org) —Scott Hubbard, a consulting professor of aeronautics and astronautics, helped guide the Kepler mission when he served as director of NASA Ames Research Center. He explains how NASA might bring the planet-hunting spacecraft back online. http://phys.org/news287938435.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Thu, 16 May 2013 15:54:04 EST news287938435 Missions to Mars have only scratched its surface. To go deeper, scientists are proposing a spacecraft that can drill into the Red Planet to potentially find signs of life. http://phys.org/news287907372.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Thu, 16 May 2013 07:16:56 EST news287907372 (Phys.org) —On May 31, 2013, asteroid 1998 QE2 will sail serenely past Earth, getting no closer than about 3.6 million miles (5.8 million kilometers), or about 15 times the distance between Earth and the moon. And while QE2 is not of much interest to those astronomers and scientists on the lookout for hazardous asteroids, it is of interest to those who dabble in radar astronomy and have a 230-foot (70-meter)—or larger—radar telescope at their disposal. http://phys.org/news287894072.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Thu, 16 May 2013 03:34:44 EST news287894072 (Phys.org) —Scientists have created the first global topographic map of Saturn's moon Titan, giving researchers a valuable tool for learning more about one of the most Earth-like and interesting worlds in the solar system. The map was just published as part of a paper in the journal Icarus. http://phys.org/news287857267.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Wed, 15 May 2013 17:21:32 EST news287857267 Scientists using images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, or MRO, have estimated that the planet is bombarded by more than 200 small asteroids or bits of comets per year forming craters at least 12.8 feet (3.9 meters) across. http://phys.org/news287853269.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Wed, 15 May 2013 16:15:41 EST news287853269 (Phys.org) —Solar activity continued on May 14, 2013, as the sun emitted a fourth X-class flare from its upper left limb, peaking at 9:48 p.m. EDT. http://phys.org/news287842105.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Wed, 15 May 2013 13:08:38 EST news287842105 The sun emitted a third significant solar flare in under 24 hours, peaking at 9:11 p.m. EDT on May 13, 2013. This flare is classified as an X3.2 flare. This is the strongest X-class flare of 2013 so far, surpassing in strength the two X-class flares that occurred earlier in the 24-hour period. http://phys.org/news287752163.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Tue, 14 May 2013 12:09:30 EST news287752163 A Soyuz space capsule with a three-man crew returning from a five-month mission to the International Space Station landed safely Tuesday on the steppes of Kazakhstan. http://phys.org/news287720419.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Tue, 14 May 2013 03:20:37 EST news287720419 (Phys.org) —On May 12, 2013, the sun emitted a significant solar flare, peaking at 10 p.m. EDT. This flare is classified as an X1.7, making it the first X-class flare of 2013. The flare was also associated with another solar phenomenon, called a coronal mass ejection (CME) that can send solar material out into space. This CME was not Earth-directed. http://phys.org/news287667319.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Mon, 13 May 2013 12:36:02 EST news287667319 (Phys.org) —With a historic robotic refueling demo ticked off its checklist, NASA's Robotic Refueling Mission (RRM) put down the hose and picked up the screwdriver and utility knife. This latest round of satellite-servicing tasks, completed in the early morning of May 10, will show how robots could access and further maintain satellites in orbit. http://phys.org/news287642736.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Mon, 13 May 2013 05:46:02 EST news287642736 Astronauts made a rare, hastily planned spacewalk to fix a serious ammonia leak at the International Space Station, and the U.S. space agency said it appeared the repair was a success. http://phys.org/news287507526.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Sat, 11 May 2013 16:12:15 EST news287507526 The International Space Station crew Friday were preparing for an emergency spacewalk to fix a "very serious" leak of ammonia from the orbiting laboratory's power system seeping into space. http://phys.org/news287406802.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Fri, 10 May 2013 12:13:34 EST news287406802 (Phys.org) —Reports given by experts in the space-health field suggest it might take longer for humans to build a colony on Mars than has been expected. Such experts speaking to attendees at the recent "Humans 2 Mars Summit" in Washington D.C. expressed concern about the dangers of Martian dust. They believe the health hazards posed by the Martian regolith could prevent humans from colonizing the planet anytime soon. http://phys.org/news287394874.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Fri, 10 May 2013 09:10:02 EST news287394874 (Phys.org) —The team operating NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has selected a second target rock for drilling and sampling. The rover will set course to the drilling location in coming days. http://phys.org/news287343191.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Thu, 09 May 2013 18:33:27 EST news287343191 The water found on the moon, like that on Earth, came from small meteorites called carbonaceous chondrites in the first 100 million years or so after the solar system formed, researchers from Brown and Case Western Reserve universities and Carnegie Institution of Washington have found. http://phys.org/news287312811.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Thu, 09 May 2013 14:00:13 EST news287312811 (Phys.org) —When Apollo 11 returned from its historic flight in 1969, the moon rocks and lunar soil collected by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin eventually found their way to some 150 laboratories worldwide. One of those was the Space Sciences Laboratory in Latimer Hall on the UC Berkeley campus. After experiments were conducted and papers published, those samples should have been sent back to NASA. Instead they wound up in storage, where they sat collecting dust until they were discovered more than four decades later. http://phys.org/news287300901.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Thu, 09 May 2013 06:48:33 EST news287300901 (Phys.org) —NASA engineer Acey Herrera recently checked out copper test wires inside the thermal shield of the Mid-Infrared Instrument, known as MIRI, that will fly aboard NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. The shield is designed to protect the vital MIRI instrument from excess heat. At the time of the photo, the thermal shield was about to go through rigorous environmental testing to ensure it can perform properly in the extreme cold temperatures that it will encounter in space. http://phys.org/news287298089.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Thu, 09 May 2013 06:01:54 EST news287298089 (Phys.org) —In the north of the red planet snowfalls occur with great regularity. Expeditions of Mars rovers into this region could therefore be easily planned. http://phys.org/news287255897.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Wed, 08 May 2013 18:18:33 EST news287255897 Landing astronauts safely on Mars is one of the biggest technological hurdles for any future manned mission to the Red Planet, even more complicated than last year's daring rover touchdown. http://phys.org/news287206500.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Wed, 08 May 2013 04:35:35 EST news287206500 Another space industry heavyweight has signed onto New Mexico's Spaceport America. http://phys.org/news287159631.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Tue, 07 May 2013 15:50:02 EST news287159631 (Phys.org) —A multi-disciplinary team of international researchers has found evidence to suggest the moon's dynamo persisted until at least 3.6 billion years ago. In their paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team says this pushes back the date for the dynamo approximately 160 million years. http://phys.org/news287138127.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Tue, 07 May 2013 09:35:45 EST news287138127 A roughly 3.5-mile high Martian mound that scientists suspect preserves evidence of a massive lake might actually have formed as a result of the Red Planet's famously dusty atmosphere, an analysis of the mound's features suggests. If correct, the research could dilute expectations that the mound holds evidence of a large body of water, which would have important implications for understanding Mars' past habitability. http://phys.org/news287071561.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Mon, 06 May 2013 15:06:08 EST news287071561 Setting foot on Mars by the 2030s is human destiny and a US priority, and every dollar available must be spent on bridging gaps in knowledge on how to get there, NASA's chief said Monday. http://phys.org/news287056350.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Mon, 06 May 2013 10:52:36 EST news287056350 NASA and private sector experts now agree that a man or woman could be sent on a mission to Mars over the next 20 years, despite huge challenges. http://phys.org/news286951639.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Sun, 05 May 2013 06:00:01 EST news286951639 (Phys.org) —Andrei Zlobin of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Vernadsky State Geological Museum, claims in a paper he's uploaded to the preprint server arXiv, that he's found rocks he believe to be from the object that caused the Tunguska explosion over Siberia in 1908. If further analysis of the rocks confirms them to be from space, it will mark the discovery of the first physical evidence of the source of the famous blast. http://phys.org/news286789579.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Fri, 03 May 2013 09:00:02 EST news286789579 (Phys.org) —A University of Iowa undergraduate student has discovered that a process occurring in Saturn's magnetosphere is linked to the planet's seasons and changes with them, a finding that helps clarify the length of a Saturn day and could alter our understanding of the Earth's magnetosphere. http://phys.org/news286786933.html Space & Earth - Space Exploration Fri, 03 May 2013 08:02:21 EST news286786933