OrbitalHub

ESA dixit:

“Rosetta launched in 2004 and travelled for ten years to its destination before deploying the lander Philae to the comet’s surface. Following the comet along its orbit around the Sun, Rosetta studied the comet’s surface changes, its dusty, gassy environment and its interaction with the solar wind. Even though scientific operations concluded in September 2016 with Rosetta’s own descent to the comet’s surface, analysis of the mission’s data will continue for decades.”

Video Credit: ESA

Wikipedia dixit:

“The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is a space telescope for NASA’s Explorers program, designed to search for exoplanets using the transit method in an area 400 times larger than that covered by the Kepler mission. It was launched on April 18, 2018 atop a Falcon 9 rocket. During its primary mission, it is expected to find more than 20,000 exoplanets compared to about 3,800 exoplanets known when it launched.

The primary mission objective for TESS is to survey the brightest stars near the Earth for transiting exoplanets over a two-year period. The TESS satellite uses an array of wide-field cameras to perform a survey of 85% of the sky. With TESS, it is possible to study the mass, size, density and orbit of a large cohort of small planets, including a sample of rocky planets in the habitable zones of their host stars. TESS will provide prime targets for further characterization by the James Webb Space Telescope, as well as other large ground-based and space-based telescopes of the future. While previous sky surveys with ground-based telescopes have mainly detected giant exoplanets, TESS will find a large number of small planets around the nearest stars in the sky. TESS records the nearest and brightest main sequence stars hosting transiting exoplanets, which are the most favorable targets for detailed investigations.

TESS uses a novel highly-elliptical orbit with an apogee approximately at the distance of the Moon and a perigee of 108,000 km, above the geosynchronous satellites. TESS orbits Earth twice during the time the Moon orbits once, a 2:1 resonance with the Moon. The orbit is expected to remain stable for a minimum of 10 years.”

Video Credit: NASA Goddard

NASA dixit:

“NASA’s Dawn spacecraft turned science fiction into science fact by using ion propulsion to explore the two largest bodies in the main asteroid belt, Vesta and Ceres. The mission will end this fall, when the spacecraft runs out of hydrazine, which keeps it oriented and in communication with Earth.”

Video Credit: NASA

NASA dixit:

“NASA’s Curiosity rover surveyed its surroundings on August 9, 2018, producing a 360-degree panorama of its current location on Mars’ Vera Rubin Ridge. The panorama includes skies darkened by a fading global dust storm and a view from the Mast Camera of the rover itself, revealing a thin layer of dust on Curiosity’s deck. In the foreground is the rover’s most recent drill target, named “Stoer” after a town in Scotland near where important discoveries about early life on Earth were made in lakebed sediments.”

Video Credit: NASA

NASA dixit:

“NASA’s OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission launched in 2016 and now (August, 2018) is entering its approach phase. OSIRIS-REx will arrive at asteroid Bennu in December, 2018. OSIRIS-REx will help unveil the mysteries of our solar system’s formation.”

Video Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Katrina Jackson

NASA dixit:

“NASA’s Parker Solar Probe mission launched August 11 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The mission will be the first to fly directly through the Sun’s corona – the hazardous region of intense heat and solar radiation in the Sun’s atmosphere that is visible during an eclipse. It will gather data that could help answer questions about solar physics that have puzzled scientists for decades. Gathering information about fundamental processes near the Sun can help improve our understanding of how our solar system’s star changes the space environment, where space weather can affect astronauts, interfere with satellite orbits, or damage spacecraft electronics.”

Credits Video: NASA