Autonomous, self-replicating robots are the best way to explore the universe, locate extraterrestrial life and perhaps even clean up space debris, argues John D. Mathews, a Penn State professor. Mathews has penned an article for the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society that argues the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI, now in its 50th year) […]
Scientists studying the first solid comet samples ever retrieved from space have just announced some preliminary findings concerning the make-up of the comet dust, reporting that it contains some of the most primitive and exotic chemical structures ever studied in a laboratory. Since NASA’s Stardust mission returned to Earth in the Utah desert some eleven […]
In the early hours of September 3, the European Space Agency’s SMART-1 spacecraft crashed into the lunar surface, the deliberate impact ending its momentous moon mapping mission. Launched in September 2003, and after an extended momentum-building trajectory around Earth, the Swedish built SMART-1 reached its destination orbit around the moon in November 2004. SMART-1’s moon […]
After nearly two years on the surface of Mars, the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity have returned a wealth of valuable information from their wanderings. But the pace of their explorations is painfully slow, covering only a few miles since their mission began. Orbiters can certainly cover the surface of a planet much more quickly, […]
