ESA on Wednesday switched off a highly successful instrument package on the International Space Station that had been continuously watching over solar activity for the past nine years.
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ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft found its final resting place on the surface of Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko on Friday, capping an eight-billion-Kilometer, twelve-and-a-half-year journey to study the origins of the Solar System and life on Earth.
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More than 700 million Kilometers from Earth, in the dark regions of our Solar System, ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft placed itself on a collision course with comet 67P to put the exclamation mark behind a remarkable mission of discovery, beginning to unlock the secrets from a distant past.
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NASA’s IRIS Mission Studying a dynamic region on the Sun received two-year mission extension to continue delivering the most detailed spectral collections and images from the sun’s lower atmosphere from where solar activity is driven.
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NASA is not giving up on the Mars InSight mission, the agency announced on Wednesday, noting that the mission is targeting a launch date of May 5, 2018 after its 2016 launch campaign had to be suspended due to problems with the prime instrument of the stationary Mars lander.
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The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency announced earlier this week that the agency’s Akatsuki Venus Orbiter successfully completed its last-chance orbital insertion maneuver and was tracked close to the expected orbit around Venus, saving a mission that had been feared lost after the spacecraft had missed its first opportunity of entering orbit around Earth’s neighbor planet.
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Japan’s Akatsuki spacecraft, also known as the Venus Climate Orbiter, is gearing up for its second and final chance to enter orbit around Venus after missing the planet in 2010 due to a problem with the craft’s propulsion system.
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NASA’s MAVEN mission presented in its initial science findings a key factor that played a role in the loss of most of the Martian atmosphere and the transition of Mars from a warm and wet environment capable of supporting life to the cold, deserted world we see today.
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NASA has officially declared the Van Allen Probes mission a success in March – one year and seven months into the planned two-year mission. The Van Allen Probes have achieved and surpassed all mission objectives and requirements for mission success.
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For previous Van Allen Probes Mission Updates, please visit the Spaceflight101 Archive Website.
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NASA’s newest Solar Observatory, the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph – IRIS, has provided its first-light image of the Sun’s atmosphere and Interface Region. The first images of IRIS were taken less than one month after its launch atop a Pegasus Rocket as part of regular spacecraft commissioning that will be ongoing for the next four weeks.
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For previous IRIS Mission Updates, please visit the Spaceflight101 Archive Website.
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NASA released a second image of Earth that was among the first light shots of the Deep Space Climate Observatory which had arrived on station at the Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 1 in June and is currently being commissioned for its mission of delivering space weather data and advanced warnings of impending solar storms as well as having a watchful eye on Earth, gathering multi-band images of the entire sunlit face of Earth and radiometric measurements of the planet’s energy balance.
For previous DSCOVR Mission Updates, please visit the Spacefligh101 Archive Website.
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NASA’s four Magnetospheric Multiscale Satellites launched atop an Atlas V last week have begun initial commissioning activities, going through health tests and each deploying two magnetometer booms, the shortest booms to be deployed over the six-week initial commissioning phase that will be followed by about four months of instrument checks and calibration.
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For previous MMS Mission Updates, please visit the Spaceflight101 Archive Website.
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