Space

NASA’s Perseverance rover continues to rack up tubes filled with rock core samples for the planned Mars Sample Return campaign. The joint effort by NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) seeks to bring scientifically selected samples back from Mars to be studied on Earth with lab equipment far more complex than could be brought to the Red Planet. Engineers are busy designing the Sample Retrieval…

NASA is sending a trio of miniature rovers to the Moon to see how well they can cooperate with one another without direct input from mission controllers back on Earth. A teamwork-minded experiment to demonstrate new technology, the CADRE (Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration) project marks another step the agency is taking toward developing robots that, by operating autonomously…

NASA’s Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) recently reached some major milestones in support of the Mars Sample Return program. The Mars Ascent Vehicle would be the first launch of a rocket from the surface of another planet. The team developing MAV conducted successful tests of the first and second stage solid rocket motors needed for the launch. Mars Sample Return will bring scientifically selected…