Gizmodo reports that increased activity on the Moon "may affect the unique radio silence on the lunar far side, an ideal location for radio telescopes to pick up faint signals from the cosmic past." This week, the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) held the first Moon Farside Protection Symposium in Italy to advocate for preserving radio silence on the far side of the Moon. The symposium hopes to raise awareness about the threat facing the far side of the Moon and develop approaches to shielding it from artificial radio emissions....

NASA has shown interest in using the lunar radio silence, proposing an ultra-long-wavelength radio telescope inside a crater on the far side of the Moon. The Lunar Crater Radio Telescope is designed to observe the universe at frequencies below 30 megahertz, which are largely unexplored by humans since those signals are reflected by the Earth's ionosphere, according to NASA. At those low frequencies, radio telescopes on the Moon can detect near-Earth objects approaching our planet before other observatories, it can search for signals of alien civilizations, and study organic molecules in interstellar space...

As more missions head towards the Moon, however, that perfect silence is increasingly being compromised. Earlier this week, for example, China launched a satellite to relay communication between ground operations on Earth and an upcoming mission on the far side of the Moon. The satellite, Queqiao-2, is the first of a constellation of satellites that China hopes to deploy by 2040 to communicate with future crewed missions on the Moon and Mars. As part of its Artemis program, NASA is aiming to build the Lunar Gateway, a space station designed to orbit the Moon to support future missions to the lunar surface and Mars. In advance of this, a NASA-funded cubesat, called CAPSTONE, has entered into a unique halo orbit to demonstrate the stability and practicality of this trajectory for future lunar missions... CAPSTONE marks the beginning of something big — establishing a permanent communication link between Earth and lunar assets, and ensuring the steady, uninterrupted flow of data.

NASA and its Chinese counterparts have eerily similar plans for lunar exploration, and the Moon is currently a 'free-for-all' with no regulations set in place as to who can own our dusty orbital companion.
"In other words, things are about to get real loud out there as far as radio transmissions are concerned."

The Associated Press reports on the passing of astronaut Thomas P. Stafford, the commander of a dress rehearsal flight for the 1969 moon landing and the first U.S.-Soviet space linkup. He was 93. From the report: Stafford, a retired Air Force three-star general, took part in four space missions. Before Apollo 10, he flew on two Gemini flights, including the first rendezvous of two U.S. capsules in orbit. He died in a hospital near his Space Coast Florida home, said Max Ary, director of the Stafford Air & Space Museum in Weatherford, Oklahoma. Stafford was one of 24 NASA astronauts who flew to the moon, but he did not land on it. Only seven of them are still alive. After he put away his flight suit, Stafford was the go-to guy for NASA when it sought independent advice on everything from human Mars missions to safety issues to returning to flight after the 2003 space shuttle Columbia accident. He chaired an oversight group that looked into how to fix the then-flawed Hubble Space Telescope, earning a NASA public service award.

"Tom was involved in so many things that most people were not aware of, such as being known as the 'Father of Stealth,'" Ary said in an email. Stafford was in charge of the famous 'Area 51' desert base that was the site of many UFO theories, but the home of testing of Air Force stealth technologies. The Apollo 10 mission in May 1969 set the stage for Apollo 11's historic mission two months later. Stafford and Gene Cernan took the lunar lander nicknamed Snoopy within 9 miles (14 kilometers) of the moon's surface. Astronaut John Young stayed behind in the main spaceship dubbed Charlie Brown. "The most impressive sight, I think, that really changed your view of things is when you first see Earth," Stafford recalled in a 1997 oral history, talking about the view from lunar orbit. Then came the moon's far side: "The Earth disappears. There's this big black void." Apollo 10's return to Earth set the world's record for fastest speed by a crewed vehicle at 24,791 mph (39,897 kph).

After the moon landings ended, NASA and the Soviet Union decided on a joint docking mission and Stafford, a one-star general at the time, was chosen to command the American side. It meant intensive language training, being followed by the KGB while in the Soviet Union, and lifelong friendships with cosmonauts. The two teams of space travelers even went to Disney World and rode Space Mountain together before going into orbit and joining ships. "We have capture," Stafford radioed in Russian as the Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft hooked up. His Russian counterpart, Alexei Leonov, responded in English: "Well done, Tom, it was a good show. I vote for you." [...] The 1975 mission included two days during which the five men worked together on experiments. After, the two teams toured the world together, meeting President Gerald Ford and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. "It helped prove to the rest of the world that two completely opposite political systems could work together," Stafford recalled at a 30th anniversary gathering in 2005. Later, Stafford was a central part of discussions in the 1990s that brought Russia into the partnership building and operating the International Space Station.

"Engineers have sent a 'poke' to the Voyager 1 probe," reports CNN, "and received a potentially encouraging response..."

"A new signal recently received from the spacecraft suggests that the NASA mission team may be making progress in its quest to understand what Voyager 1 is experiencing..." [T]hey hope to fix a communication issue with the aging spacecraft that has persisted for five months. Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, are venturing through uncharted cosmic territory along the outer reaches of the solar system. While Voyager 1 has continued to relay a steady radio signal to its mission control team on Earth, that signal has not carried any usable data since November, which has pointed to an issue with one of the spacecraft's three onboard computers...

On March 3, the team noticed that activity from one part of the flight data system stood out from the rest of the garbled data. While the signal wasn't in the format the Voyager team is used to when the flight data system is functioning as expected, an engineer with NASA's Deep Space Network was able to decode it... The decoded signal included a readout of the entire flight data system's memory, according to an update NASA shared.

"The (flight data system) memory includes its code, or instructions for what to do, as well as variables, or values used in the code that can change based on commands or the spacecraft's status," according to a NASA blog post. "It also contains science or engineering data for downlink. The team will compare this readout to the one that came down before the issue arose and look for discrepancies in the code and the variables to potentially find the source of the ongoing issue."
"The source of the issue appears to be with one of three onboard computers, the flight data subsystem (FDS), which is responsible for packaging the science and engineering data before it's sent to Earth," according to NASA's statement.

CNN reminds readers that Voyager 1 "is currently the farthest spacecraft from Earth at about 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away." Both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are now in interstellar space.

Thanks to Slashdot reader Thelasko for sharing the news.

The Washington Post reports: Nearly a decade ago, Congress passed a law that allows private American space companies the rights to resources they mine on celestial bodies, including the moon.

Now, there's a private venture that says it intends to do just that.

Founded by a pair of former executives from Blue Origin, the space venture founded by Jeff Bezos, and an Apollo astronaut, the company, Interlune, announced itself publicly Wednesday by saying it has raised $18 million and is developing the technology to harvest and bring materials back from the moon... Specifically, Interlune is focused on Helium-3, a stable isotope that is scarce on Earth but plentiful on the moon and could be used as fuel in nuclear fusion reactors as well as helping power the quantum computing industry.

The company, based in Seattle, has been working for about four years on the technology, which comes as the commercial sector is working with NASA on its goal of building an enduring presence on and around the moon... Rob Meyerson, the former president of Blue Origin, co-founded Interlune with Gary Lai, another former executive at Blue, and Harrison Schmitt, a geologist who flew to the moon during Apollo 17... In an interview, Meyerson said that the company intends to be the first to collect, return and then sell lunar resources and test the 2015 law. There is a large demand for Helium-3 in the quantum computing industry, which requires some of its systems to operate in extremely cold temperatures, and Interlune has already lined up a "customer that wants to buy lunar resources in large quantities," he said.

"We intend to be the first to go commercialize and deliver and support those customers," he said. NASA might want to be a customer as well. In 2020, it said it was looking for companies to collect rocks and dirt from the lunar surface and sell them to NASA as part of a technology development program that would eventually help astronauts "live off the land...." The company's funding round was led by the venture capital firm Seven Seven Six, whose founder and general partner, Alexis Ohanian, said that the space sector has become far more appealing to investors. "The space economy is something we can actually talk about with a straight face now, and I think some of the smartest people on the planet are making those efforts," he said...

He said he was aware that it might take years, or longer for a moon mining business to make money. But he said that, "we're comfortable waiting for a decade plus to see those returns."
NASA is planning more missions like the Intuitive Machines landing earlier this year, according to the article, "which it says will not only help pave the way for humans to return to the moon but for private industry to begin commercial operations there as well." Interlune plans "a prospecting machine" as soon as 2026, followed by an "end-to-end demonstration" in 2028 that harvests and returns a small quanity of Helium-3, and then full-scale operations by 2030.

"China has also said that it is interested in extracting other resources, including Helium-3, which it said was present in a sample it returned from the moon in 2020."

With funding from NASA, researchers from Villanova University have obtained a never-before-seen view of the central engine at the heart of our galaxy. Space.com reports: The new map of this central region of the Milky Way, which took four years to assemble, reveals the relationship between magnetic fields at the heart of our galaxy and the cold dust structures that dwell there. This dust forms the building blocks of stars, planets, and, ultimately, life as we know it. The central engine of the Milky Way drives this process. That means a clearer picture of dust and magnetic interactions builds a better understanding of the Milky Way and our place within it. The team's findings also have implications beyond our galaxy, offering glimpses of how dust and magnetic fields interact in the central engines of other galaxies.

"The center of the Milky Way and most of the space between stars is filled with a lot of dust, and this is important for our galaxy's life cycle," David Chuss, research team leader and a physics professor at Villanova University, told Space.com. "What we looked at was light emitted from these cool dust grains produced by heavy elements forged in stars and dispersed when those stars die and explode." [...] Chuss and colleagues received funding from NASA to investigate this dusty central zone using the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), which was a telescope that circled the globe at an altitude of 45,000 feet (13,716 meters) aboard a Boeing 747 plane. The project's Far-Infrared Polarimetric Large Area CMZ Exploration (FIREPLACE) created an infrared map that spans around 500 light-years across the center of the Milky Way over nine flights. Using measurements of the polarization of the radiation emitted from dust that is aligned with magnetic fields, the intricate structure of those magnetic fields themselves was inferred by the team. This was then overlaid onto a three-color map that shows warm dust with a pink hue and cool dust clouds in blue. The image also shows radio-wave-emitting filaments in yellow.

"This is a journey, not a destination, but what we've found is this is a very complicated thing. The directions of the magnetic field vary all across the clouds at the center of the Milky Way," Chuss explained. "This is the first step in trying to figure out how the field that we see in the radiowaves across these large organized filaments may relate to the rest of the dynamics of the center of the Milky Way." Chuss explained that this complicated picture of magnetic fields was something that he and the FIREPLACE team had expected to see with the new SOFIA map; the observations agreed with smaller-scale infrared and radio wave observations previously made of the heart of the Milky Way. Where this new map, however, really comes into its own is the sheer scale. It manages to reveal some never-before mapped regions. The fine detail woven into it is stunning as well. A preprint version of the SOFIA data is available on arXiv.

The FAA today awarded a launch license to SpaceX for Starship's third-ever test flight on March 14. "The FAA determined SpaceX met all safety, environmental, policy and financial responsibility requirements," the agency wrote in a post on X this afternoon. Space.com reports: The megarocket has two test flights under its belt so far, which took place in April and November of last year. Starship's two stages failed to separate as planned on the April flight, however, which ended after just four minutes. Things went better in November -- stage separation occurred as planned, for example -- but both stages ended up exploding high in the sky on that mission as well. The FAA wrapped up its investigation into what happened on the November flight late last month. But the agency took some additional time before awarding a license for launch number three today.

Thursday's flight will be different, and bolder, than its predecessors. "The third flight test aims to build on what we've learned from previous flights while attempting a number of ambitious objectives, including the successful ascent burn of both stages, opening and closing Starship's payload door, a propellant transfer demonstration during the upper stage's coast phase, the first ever re-light of a Raptor engine while in space, and a controlled reentry of Starship," SpaceX wrote in a mission description. In addition, Thursday's test launch will aim to bring Starship's upper stage down in the Indian Ocean. The target splashdown zone for the first two test missions, by contrast, was the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii.

Space.com describes it as "a nearly 3-ton leftover tossed overboard from the International Space Station" — which crashed back to earth today. One satellite tracker claims to have filmed it passing over the Netherlands...

"A couple minutes later reentry and it would have reached Fort Meyers" in Florida, posted astronomer Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. But instead it re-entered the earth's atmosphere "over the Gulf of Mexico between Cancun and Cuba," Friday afternoon. "This was within the previous prediction window but a little to the northeast of the 'most likely' part of the path."

From Space.com: The multi-ton Exposed Pallet 9 (EP9) was jettisoned from the space station back in March 2021. At the time, it was reported to be the most massive object ever tossed overboard from the International Space Station. Disposing of used or unnecessary equipment in such a way is common practice aboard the space station, as the objects typically burn up harmlessly in Earth's atmosphere.

Ahead of EP9's reentry, the Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Relief, National Warning Center 1 in Bonn, Germany issued this information... "The object is battery packs from the International Space Station. Luminous phenomena or the perception of a sonic boom are possible...." EP9 is loaded with old Nickel-Hydrogen batteries, NASA explained at the time it was jettisoned, also explaining that EP9 has the approximate mass of a large SUV and predicting it would re-enter Earth's atmosphere in two-to-four years.
"A large space object reenters the atmosphere in a natural way approximately once per week," the European Space Agency points out, "with the majority of the associated fragments burning up before reaching the ground.

"Most spacecraft, launch vehicles and operational hardware are designed to limit the risks associated with a reentry."

Astronomers have observed a distant planet that could be entirely covered in a deep water ocean, in findings that advance the search for habitable conditions beyond Earth. From a report: The observations, by Nasa's James Webb space telescope (JWST), revealed water vapour and chemical signatures of methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of the exoplanet, which is twice Earth's radius and about 70 light years away. This chemical mix is consistent with a water world where the ocean would span the entire surface, and a hydrogen-rich atmosphere, according to researchers from the University of Cambridge, although they do not envisage a balmy, inviting seascape. "The ocean could be upwards of 100 degrees [Celsius] or more," said Prof Nikku Madhusudhan, who led the analysis. At high atmospheric pressure, an ocean this hot could still be liquid, "but it's not clear if it would be habitable," he added.

This interpretation is favoured in a paper published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics Letters, but is disputed by a Canadian team that made additional observations of the same exoplanet, which is known as TOI-270 d. They detected the same atmospheric chemicals but argue the planet would be too hot for liquid water -- possibly 4,000C -- and instead would feature a rocky surface topped by an incredibly dense atmosphere of hydrogen and water vapour. Whichever view wins out, these latest observations showcase the stunning insights James Webb is giving into the nature of planets beyond our solar system. The telescope captures the starlight that has been filtered through the atmospheres of orbiting planets to give detailed breakdowns of the chemical elements present. From this, astronomers can build up a picture of conditions at a planet's surface -- and the likelihood of life being able to survive there.

The 46-year-old probe, which flew by Jupiter and Saturn in its youth and inspired earthlings with images of the planet as a "Pale Blue Dot," hasn't sent usable data from interstellar space in months. From a report: When Voyager 1 launched in 1977, scientists hoped it could do what it was built to do and take up-close images of Jupiter and Saturn. It did that -- and much more. Voyager 1 discovered active volcanoes, moons and planetary rings, proving along the way that Earth and all of humanity could be squished into a single pixel in a photograph, a "pale blue dot," as the astronomer Carl Sagan called it. It stretched a four-year mission into the present day, embarking on the deepest journey ever into space. Now, it may have bid its final farewell to that faraway dot.

Voyager 1, the farthest man-made object in space, hasn't sent coherent data to Earth since November. NASA has been trying to diagnose what the Voyager mission's project manager, Suzanne Dodd, called the "most serious issue" the robotic probe has faced since she took the job in 2010. The spacecraft encountered a glitch in one of its computers that has eliminated its ability to send engineering and science data back to Earth. The loss of Voyager 1 would cap decades of scientific breakthroughs and signal the beginning of the end for a mission that has given shape to humanity's most distant ambition and inspired generations to look to the skies.

In an update on CBS' "60 Minutes" on Sunday, Blue Origin said it was aiming to send an uncrewed lander to the surface of the moon in the next 12 to 16 months. A crewed version is expected to follow. GeekWire reports: "We're expecting to land on the moon between 12 and 16 months from today," [said John Couluris, senior vice president for lunar permanence at Blue Origin]. "I understand I'm saying that publicly, but that's what our team is aiming towards." Couluris was referring to a pathfinder version of Blue Origin's nearly three-story-tall Blue Moon Mark 1 cargo lander, which is taking shape at Blue Origin's production facility in Huntsville, Ala. The Pathfinder Mission would demonstrate the MK1's capabilities -- including its hydrogen-fueled BE-7 engine, its precision landing system and its ability to deliver up to 3 tons of payload anywhere on the moon.

Blue Origin envisions building multiple cargo landers, as well as a crewed version of the Blue Moon lander that could transport NASA astronauts to and from the lunar surface. The MK1 cargo lander is designed for a single launch and delivery, but the crewed lander would be reusable. "We'll launch them to lunar orbit, and we'll leave them there," Couluris explained. "And we'll refuel them in orbit, so that multiple astronauts can use the same vehicle back and forth."

The Pathfinder Mission would be funded by Blue Origin, but NASA is providing support for other Blue Moon missions. Blue Origin's $3.4 billion contract with NASA calls for the crewed lander to be available for the Artemis 5 moon mission by 2029, with an uncrewed test flight as part of the buildup. The in-space refueling operation would make use of a cislunar transporter, built by Lockheed Martin, that could travel between low Earth orbit and lunar orbit with supplies. "We are now building with NASA the infrastructure to ensure lunar permanency," Couluris said. NASA is providing funding for the Blue Moon landing system as an alternative to SpaceX's Starship system, which is under development at SpaceX's Starbase in South Texas. The crewed Starship lunar lander is scheduled to come into play for Artemis 3, a milestone landing mission that's currently scheduled for 2026. [...]

Blue Origin plans to send the MK1 lander to the moon on its reusable New Glenn rocket, which is also under development. A couple of weeks ago, a pathfinder version of that rocket was raised on a Florida launch pad for the first time, and it's currently going through a series of cryogenic tanking tests. Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp, who was brought over to the company from Amazon last year to accelerate work on New Glenn, said in a LinkedIn post that he's "looking forward to bringing this heavy-lift capacity to our customers later this year." One of the early launches is tasked with sending a pair of NASA probes to Mars.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: New research suggests there's less oxygen on the icy surface of Jupiter's moon Europa than thought -- and that could affect what if any life might be lurking in Europa's underground ocean. Even with little or no oxygen, microbes might still be bustling around in the ocean believed to exist miles beneath Europa's frozen crust. As for what else, "who knows," said the Nasa scientist Kevin Hand, who was not involved in the study published on Monday in Nature Astronomy. More work is needed to confirm these findings, which are contrary to earlier telescope observations of condensed oxygen in Europa's ice, indicating a higher oxygen concentration, said Hand.

The new study is based on data collected by Nasa's Juno spacecraft during a particularly close flyby of Europa in 2022 -- a distance of just 219 miles (353km). A US-European team calculated that between 13 and 39lbs (6 and 18kg) of oxygen are produced every second at Europa's surface. Previous estimates had a much wider spread, with as much as 2,245 pounds (1,100 kilograms) of oxygen produced per second. So "unless Europa's oxygen production was significantly higher in the past," the new measurements provide "a narrower range to support habitability," the researchers wrote. This oxygen is formed, along with hydrogen, as Jupiter's radiation blasts Europa's global shell of frozen water. It is unknown how much oxygen escapes into the moon's atmosphere, how much remains in the ice and how much might find its way to the subterranean sea. The report notes that NASA plans to launch the Europa Clipper this fall. "The spacecraft will make dozens of close flybys of Europa -- nearly the size of our moon -- while orbiting the giant gas planet."

"NASA said Friday it is shutting down a $2 billion satellite refueling project," reports UPI, "after criticizing the project's contractor for poor performance." The agency in a statement said it will discontinue the On-orbit Servicing, Assembly and Manufacturing 1 project after nearly a decade of work due to "continued technical, cost, and schedule challenges, and a broader community evolution away from refueling unprepared spacecraft, which has led to a lack of a committed partner." [...] The spacecraft would have utilized an attached Space Infrastructure Dexterous Robot (SPIDER) to refuel the Landsat, assemble a communications antenna and demonstrate in-space manufacture of a 32-foot carbon fiber composite beam to verify the capability of constructing large spacecraft structures in orbit... An audit from NASA's Inspector General, however, found OSAM-1 was on track to exceed the projected $2.05 billion budget and would not make its December 2026 launch date, laying the blame on the "poor performance of Maxar."

"NASA and Maxar officials acknowledged that Maxar underestimated the scope and complexity of the work, lacked full understanding of NASA technical requirements, and were deficient in necessary expertise," the report read.

The report also noted Maxar was "no longer profiting from their work on OSAM-1," after which the xproject appeared not "to be a high priority for Maxar in terms of the quality of its staffing."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.

Space.com writes that NASA's plan to return samples from Mars to the earth "is facing major challenges, according to a new report.

"Design, cost and scheduling are all significant obstacles, an audit report of NASA's Mars Sample Return (MSR) Program by the agency's Office of Inspector General (OIG) finds..." It involves landing on Mars to collect samples taken by the Perseverance rover and launching those samples to rendezvous with an orbiter, which will haul them to Earth. Perseverance is already on Mars, snagging and storing samples. But the program still needs to build a Sample Retrieval Lander and an Earth Return Orbiter, the latter being developed and funded by the European Space Agency. The Mars Sample Return program is one of the most technically complex, operationally demanding and ambitious robotic science missions ever undertaken by NASA, according to the OIG report.

The report notes design, architecture and schedule issues with the Capture Containment and Return System. These design issues resulted in adding about $200 million to the budget and one year of lost schedule... There is concern that, due to the number and significance of cost increase indicators so far, the $7.4 billion estimate is "premature and may be insufficient," the report finds. Now, the complexity... could drive costs to between $8 billion to $11 billion, the OIG report notes, citing a September 2023 Independent Review Board report. Notably, a July 2020 estimate listed costs of $2.5 to $3 billion.

These new figures indicate significant financial challenges and uncertainties... Issues include inflation, supply chain problems and increases in funding requests for specific program components.

Nikon is working with NASA to make a mirrorless camera that astronauts will use during the agency's incoming Artemis III mission to document their return to the Moon. From a report: On Thursday, NASA announced that it had entered a Space Act agreement with Nikon to develop the Handheld Universal Lunar Camera (HULC), a camera system designed to capture imagery in low light and survive the harsh lunar environment. The crewed Artemis III mission -- which will launch "no earlier than September 2026" -- aims to explore the lunar south pole, a region of the Moon that contains water ice within permanently shadowed craters.

That makes it an area of scientific interest, but the extreme lighting and temperature conditions pose particular technical challenges for operating equipment within the lunar south pole region. Nikon's full-frame Z9 flagship has already been used in thermal, vacuum, and radiation testing before the agreement, with a modified version of the camera forming the base of the HULC system alongside Nikkor lenses. The HULC design also implements thermal blankets designed by NASA to protect the camera from dust and extreme temperatures and modified electrical components to minimize potential issues caused by radiation. A custom grip with modified buttons has been used to make it easier for suited crew members to operate the camera system while wearing gloves.

Russian space officials have acknowledged a continuing air leak from the Russian segment of the International Space Station, but said it poses no danger to its crew. From a report: The Roscosmos state corporation said that specialists were monitoring the leak and the crew "regularly conducts work to locate and fix possible spots of the leak." It said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies: "There is no threat to the crew or the station itself." Joel Montalbano, Nasa's station project manager, had noted on Wednesday that the leak in the Russian segment has increased but emphasised that it remained small and posed no threat to the crew's safety or vehicle operations.

As the space outpost is ageing, the crew has to spend more time to repair and maintain it, Roscosmos said. Russian space officials first reported a leak in the Zvezda module in August 2020 and later that year Russian crew members located what they believed was its source and tried to fix it. In November 2021, another potentially leaky spot was found in a different part of the Russian section of the station. Roscosmos and Nasa have said the leak posed no danger to the crew and did not affect operations on the station. There have been other glitches. In October, coolant leaked from an external backup radiator for Russia's new science lab, Nauka, although its main thermal control system was working normally and space officials said the crew and the station were not in danger.

Robin George Andrews writes via The New York Times: In 2022, when NASA's $325 million spacecraft crashed into an asteroid named Dimorphos at 14,000 miles per hour, cheers and applause erupted back on Earth. NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission deliberately targeted Dimorphos to change its orbit around the larger asteroid Didymos as a dress rehearsal of sorts for thwarting a deadly space rock that might someday head toward Earth. The world's first-ever planetary defense experiment was deemed a triumph: The asteroid's orbit shrank by 33 minutes, far above the minimum threshold of 73 seconds. But what the DART team didn't realize then was just how bizarrely Dimorphos responded to that punch. A new study, published on Monday in Nature Astronomy, has concluded that DART hit Dimorphos so hard that the asteroid changed shape.

Simulations of the impact suggest that the spacecraft's death did not excavate a normal, bowl-shaped crater. Instead, it left behind something that resembles a dent. And although the artificial impact blasted millions of tons of rock into space, plenty splashed back onto its sides like tremendous tidal waves. It widened Dimorphos, transforming it from a squat orb into a flat-topped oval -- like an M&M candy. That the asteroid acted like a fluid comes down to its peculiar composition. It's not a solid contiguous rock, but more like "a pile of sand," said Sabina Raducan, a planetary scientist at the University of Bern in Switzerland and the study's lead author. And a low-density asteroid barely held together by its own gravity was never going to respond in a straightforward manner when a van-size spacecraft flew into its face.

Dimorphos's response is "completely outside of the realm of physics as we understand it" in our day-to-day lives, said Cristina Thomas, the lead of the mission's observations working group at Northern Arizona University who was not involved with the study. And "this has overarching implications for planetary defense." DART showed that a tiny spacecraft can deflect an asteroid. But the study indicates that crashing a similarly disjointed space rock too forcefully risks fragmenting it, which, in a real asteroid emergency, could create multiple Earthbound asteroids. Planetary defense, as a concept, clearly works. "We know we can do it," said Federica Spoto, an asteroid dynamics researcher at the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard and Smithsonian, who was not involved with the new study. "But we have to do it right."

The first privately built spacecraft has successfully landed on the lunar surface on Thursday. "We can confirm, without a doubt, that our equipment is on the surface of the moon," said Stephen Altemus, CEO of Intuitive Machines, the Houston-based company that operated the Odysseus spacecraft. "Welcome to the moon." From a report: As it approached the surface of the moon, Odysseus lost contact with NASA, resulting in several anxious minutes for those who worked on the joint project. But after approximately 15 minutes of searching, officials confirmed that they were once again receiving signals from the spacecraft. "A commercial lander named Odysseus, powered by a company called Intuitive Machines, launched up on a Space X rocket, carrying a bounty of NASA scientific instruments and bearing the dream of a new adventure, a new adventure in science, innovation and American leadership, well, all of that aced the landing of a lifetime," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said after contact had been reestablished. "Today for the first time in more than a half century, the U.S. has returned to the moon."

Altemus had estimated that Odysseus had an 80% chance of successfully landing on the moon, citing previous failed attempts as an advantage. "We've stood on the shoulders of everybody who's tried before us," Altemus said. It was the first American mission to land on the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972 and the first private spacecraft ever to make a soft landing there. While it was a private mission, NASA paid Intuitive Machines $118 million to deliver six instruments to the moon. And the U.S. space agency provided streaming video of the landing.

A spacecraft containing pharmaceutical drugs that were grown on orbit has finally returned to Earth today after more than eight months in space. From a report: Varda Space Industries' in-space manufacturing capsule, called Winnebago-1, landed in the Utah desert at around 4:40 p.m. EST. Inside the capsule are crystals of the drug ritonavir, which is used to treat HIV/AIDS. It marks a successful conclusion of Varda's first experimental mission to grow pharmaceuticals on orbit, as well as the first time a commercial company has landed a spacecraft on U.S. soil, ever. The capsule will now be sent back to Varda's facilities in Los Angeles for analysis, and the vials of ritonavir will be shipped to a research company called Improved Pharma for post-flight characterization, Varda said in a statement. The company will also be sharing all the data collected through the mission with the Air Force and NASA, per existing agreements with those agencies.

The first-of-its-kind reentry and landing is also a major win for Rocket Lab, which partnered with Varda on the mission. Rocket Lab hosted Varda's manufacturing capsule inside its Photon satellite bus; through the course of the mission, Photon provided power, communications, attitude control and other essential operations. At the mission's conclusion, the bus executed a series of maneuvers and de-orbit burns that put the miniature drug lab on the proper reentry trajectory. The final engine burn was executed shortly after 4 p.m. EST. Photon burned up in the atmosphere as planned while the capsule, protected by a heat shield and with the aid of a parachute, continued to land.

A software error on the part of Firefly Aerospace doomed Lockheed Martin's Electronic Steerable Antenna (ESA) demonstrator to a shorter-than-expected orbital life following a botched Alpha launch. From a report: According to Firefly's mission update, the error was in the Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) software algorithm, preventing the system from sending the necessary pulse commands to the Reaction Control System (RCS) thrusters before the relight of the second stage. The result was that Lockheed's payload was left in the wrong orbit, and Firefly's engineers were left scratching their heads.

The launch on December 22, 2023 -- dubbed "Fly the Lightning" -- seemed to go well at first. It was the fourth for the Alpha, and after Firefly finally registered a successful launch a few months earlier in September, initial indications looked good. However, a burn of the second stage to circularize the orbit did not go to plan, and Lockheed's satellite was left in the wrong orbit, with little more than weeks remaining until it re-entered the atmosphere.

As it turned out, the Lockheed team completed their primary mission objectives. The payload was, after all, designed to demonstrate faster on-orbit sensor calibration. Just perhaps not quite that fast. Software issues aboard spacecraft are becoming depressingly commonplace. A recent example was the near disastrous first launch of Boeing's CST-100 Starliner, where iffy code could have led, in NASA parlance, to "spacecraft loss." In a recent interview with The Register, former Voyager scientist Garry Hunt questioned if the commercial spaceflight sector of today would take the same approach to quality as the boffins of the past.

"Would you like to live on Mars?" NASA asked Friday on social media.

"You can help us move humanity toward that goal by participating in a simulated, year-long Mars surface mission at NASA's Johnson Space Center." NASA is seeking applicants to participate in its next simulated one-year Mars surface mission to help inform the agency's plans for human exploration of the Red Planet. The second of three planned ground-based missions called CHAPEA (Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog) is scheduled to kick off in spring 2025.

Each CHAPEA mission involves a four-person volunteer crew living and working inside a 1,700-square-foot, 3D-printed habitat based at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. The habitat, called the Mars Dune Alpha, simulates the challenges of a mission on Mars, including resource limitations, equipment failures, communication delays, and other environmental stressors. Crew tasks include simulated spacewalks, robotic operations, habitat maintenance, exercise, and crop growth.

NASA is looking for healthy, motivated U.S. citizens or permanent residents who are non-smokers, 30-55 years old, and proficient in English for effective communication between crewmates and mission control. Applicants should have a strong desire for unique, rewarding adventures and interest in contributing to NASA's work to prepare for the first human journey to Mars...

As NASA works to establish a long-term presence for scientific discovery and exploration on the Moon through the Artemis campaign, CHAPEA missions provide important scientific data to validate systems and develop solutions for future missions to the Red Planet. With the first CHAPEA crew more than halfway through their yearlong mission, NASA is using research gained through the simulated missions to help inform crew health and performance support during Mars expeditions.
You can see the simulated Mars habitat in this NASA video.

The deadline for applicants is Tuesday, April 2, according to NASA. "A master's degree in a STEM field such as engineering, mathematics, or biological, physical or computer science from an accredited institution with at least two years of professional STEM experience or a minimum of one thousand hours piloting an aircraft is required."