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Mars Ascent Vehicle from Northrop Grumman takes shape for Mars Sample Return mission

Since Mariner 9 entered orbit around Mars on November 14, 1971, NASA has been continuously studying the Red Planet. The Viking landers reached the surface of Mars five years later and began sampling the soil. Since then, numerous landers and rovers with instruments from institutions across Earth have studied and traveled the red terrain in search of answers to many of our questions. But all of the sample analysis has had to rely on the robotic laboratories and the data streams beamed back to Earth. Now, NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) are seeking to change that with the Mars…

Seawater could be the main source of lithium in the future!

Booming electric vehicle sales have spurred a growing demand for lithium. But the light metal, which is essential for making power-packed rechargeable batteries, isn’t abundant. Now, researchers report a major step toward tapping a virtually limitless lithium supply: pulling it straight out of seawater. “This represents substantial progress” for the field, says Jang Wook Choi, a chemical engineer at Seoul National University who was not involved with the work. He adds that the approach might also prove useful for reclaiming lithium from used batteries. Lithium is prized for rechargeables because it stores more energy by weight than other battery materials.…

First NASA Probe Mission to Venus in 40 Years: DAVINCI+ to Explore Divergent Fate of Earth’s Mysterious Twin

Although Earth and Venus are similar in size and location, they are very different worlds today. While Earth has oceans of water and abundant life, Venus is dry and fiercely inhospitable. Although it’s somewhat closer to the Sun — about 70 percent of Earth’s distance — Venus is much hotter, with temperatures at the surface high enough to melt lead. The scorched landscape is obscured by clouds of sulfuric acid, and it is smothered by a thick atmosphere of mostly carbon dioxide at over 90 times the pressure of Earth’s, which causes the air to behave more like a fluid…

New Records of Singapore’s Sea-Level History Going Back 10,000 Years

Climate scientists at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU, Singapore) have extended the known record of Singapore’s sea-level to almost 10,000 years ago, providing a more robust dataset to aid future predictions of sea-level rise. One of the main challenges in researching climate change is to reconstruct its history over thousands of years. To have a better sense of the potential causes and effects of future changes, scientists need to learn from and understand the past. Extracting ancient sediments from a depth of up to 40 m underground at a site at Singapore’s Marina South, an international team led by…

SpaceX cargo spaceship dubbed CRS-22 launches new solar arrays for the ISS and even sticks the landing!

SpaceX launched its 17th rocket of the year today (June 3), sending a robotic Dragon cargo capsule toward the International Space Station before nailing a landing at sea. A two-stage Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Pad 39A here at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 1:29 p.m. EDT (1729 GMT), kicking off the company’s 22nd resupply mission to the orbiting lab for NASA. The Dragon is packed with more than 7,300 lbs. (3,311 kilograms) of supplies, scientific experiments and hardware, including two new solar arrays for the space station’s power grid. Approximately 9 minutes after liftoff, the Falcon 9’s first…