2023-05-28 10:25:43
The desire to explore lies at the heart of human nature, and nowhere is this more apparent than in our pursuit of extraterrestrial travel.
This week, the AX-2 mission carried four passengers to the International Space Station, including former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson and stem cell researcher Rayana Barnawi, the first Saudi woman in space.
Virgin Galactic also returned its supersonic plane to space for the first time since 2021, with two pilots and a crew of four company employees on board the test flight.
Now, NASA is preparing to return to the surface of the moon once more in 2025, but they will get a little help from some robotic explorers, as engineers are busy building a golf cart-sized lunar module that is scheduled to land on the south pole of the moon in 2024.
Lunar update.
Viper, the updated version of the Lunar spacecraft, aims to search for ice on the moon’s surface, in addition to collecting and analyzing samples, and mapping the expected water reserves on the moon’s surface.
Engineers are currently testing an early version of the Viper at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California.
Thanks to the robust and intelligent design, the robotic explorer will be able to deal with the harsh conditions of a place that has not yet been explored by humans.
The rover’s findings might help maintain the human presence on the moon by allowing astronauts to collect and test the potable water and other resources available on the moon.
This comes at a time when a NASA orbiter took pictures of what appears to be the impact site of the Hakuto-R spacecraft, which launched as part of an iSpace mission in April that failed to land on the moon.
(Ashley Strickland – CNN)
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