Mars Express Contract Signed
The contract to develop the Mars Express spacecraft was signed by the European Space Agency and Euro-Russian Starsem. The launch date for the spacecraft is set for June 2003. This is Starsem’s second contract with the ESA.
Astronomy Now
SpaceViews
Twin Telescopes Built
Two new ground-based telescopes have been built for two remote locations – Hawaii and Chile. Named Gemini telescopes, they use large mirrors and sophisticated electronics to be 10 times more powerful than those previously built.
Cosmonauts Try to Raise Money for Mir
Desperate to keep Mir in orbit, two Russian cosmonauts have begun a grassroots effort to find funding for the doomed space station. Vitaly Sevastyanov and Gherman Titov have created the “People’s Charity Foundation” as a way for ordinary Russians to contribute to the station’s funding. They’ll need to raise $100 – $250 million to keep it up another year.
SpaceViews
In recent article, soil scientist John Grant discusses the ways in which we could harvest…
It's one of nature's topsy-turvy tricks that the deep interior of the Earth is as…
To terraform Mars, we will need to give it a protective magnetic field. Here's how…
The commercial space company SpinLaunch just conducted its first successful launch test from their facility…
Planets without plate tectonics are unlikely to be habitable. But currently, we've never seen the…
Even after 30 months in space, The Planetary Society’s LightSail 2 mission continues to successfully…