NASA awarded Blue Origin a contract Tuesday to develop the agency’s Mars Telecommunications Network, a next-generation communications system that will enable reliable, high-bandwidth communications and navigation services for current and future Mars missions. The firm-fixed-price contract has a maximum potential value of approximately $700 million to deliver a high-performance Mars telecommunications orbiter to NASA no
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Earth and the Martian moon Phobos dance together in a series of images recently acquired by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover. Earth appears as a point of light in the Martian sky, disappearing behind the crescent of Phobos, the larger of Mars’ two moons. This is the first time humanity has captured from the surface of
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Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time. Since landing on
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When NASA’s Curiosity rover recently began ascending a Martian valley nicknamed “Big Valley,” it sent back images that were familiar to scientists on the mission: honeycomb textures called polygonal fractures, each about 1.5 to 3 inches (4 to 8 centimeters) wide. The mission has detected small specks of these geometric shapes several times before, but
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Scientists on NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) mission have discovered a key piece of the puzzle in understanding certain types of auroras on Mars, discovering that they form similarly to terrestrial auroras.Results published Thursday in Nature Communications show that the same mechanism that circulates and catapults charged particles into Earth’s atmosphere is happening
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