Deep Space
Stories about missions throughout solar system and beyond.
Astrobotic Tests Lunar Wireless Charging System
If your phone dies on the Moon, Astrobotic has you covered. Yesterday, the Pittsburgh-based company announced it has completed testing on a wireless charging system that can prep a variety of lunar surface infrastructure for the two-week lunar night. The lunar colony: Big plans are in the works for a lunar and cislunar economy in…
JWST Sustains Micrometeoroid Impact
Earlier this year, we held our breaths for weeks as the super-powerful and highly delicate JWST made a galactic journey a million miles away to its final orbit and unfolded all its individual components. The observatory had 344 single points of failure in its deployment phase. In January, NASA announced that the telescope had fully…
France Signs Artemis Accords
France has signed the Artemis Accords, joining 19 other signatories in an agreement to maintain safe and cooperative operations in space. About the accords: In 2020, NASA kickstarted an initiative to foster international cooperation and set some ground rules for spacefaring before humans returned to the moon. Nations who sign the Artemis Accords agree to…
AstroForge Raises $13M Seed Round
AstroForge, an asteroid-mining startup and Y Combinator alum, has raised a $13M seed round led by Initialized Capital, with participation from Seven Seven Six, EarthRise, Aera VC, Liquid 2, and Soma. AstroForge 101: Cofounders Matt Gialich and Jose Acain hail from Virgin Orbit and SpaceX, where they embraced a high-risk, fail-fast Silicon Valley mindset. The…
Lockheed and Filecoin Foundation Partner to Deploy IPFS
Lockheed Martin has partnered with the Filecoin Foundation, a decentralized database developer, to deploy the Interplanetary File System (IPFS) for future use in lunar communications. IPFS: The two companies are working to enable faster internet connection from the Moon. Usually when you try to access a piece of information on the internet, your computer has…
Ingenuity Returns to the Landing Site
Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech During its 26th fight, the Mars Ingenuity helicopter snapped incredible images of the parachute and backshell that helped the chopper and the Perseverance rover to land on the Red Planet’s surface a little over a year ago. This was no coincidence: NASA and JPL intentionally directed the helicopter over to the landing site,…
National Academies Release 2022 Planetary Science Decadal Survey
Once every blue moon ten years, NASA tasks the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine with determining the highest-priority planetary science missions for the next decade. The Academies published the fruits of their labor– “Origins, Worlds, and Life: A Decadal Strategy for Planetary Science and Astrobiology 2023-2032”—yesterday, revealing a new ranked menu of deep-space…
ESA Votes to Suspend Roscosmos Partnerships
It’s officially official for ExoMars: The ESA’s Mars rover mission will not fly this year. Yesterday, ESA’s member states voted unanimously to suspend all operations with Roscosmos, the Russian space agency. In response to heavy sanctions, Roscosmos announced Feb. 26 that it would nix future Soyuz launches from French Guiana and pull staff from the…
Jared Isaacman and SpaceX Announce Polaris Program
Rook can’t get enough of space. At least, that’s the vibe we’re getting from Jared “Rook” Isaacman, the billionaire CEO of Shift4 Payments and commander/financier of Inspiration4. Yesterday, Isaacman announced that he’d purchase three additional crewed spaceflight missions from SpaceX. The trio of missions, dubbed the Polaris Program, is slated for launch in late 2022 and…
