Sentences with phrase «other orbiter»

It flies an elongated orbit, sometimes farther from Mars than NASA's other orbiters and sometimes closer to Mars, so it crosses altitudes occupied by those orbiters.

Unlike the nine other orbiters that NASA has blasted toward Mars over the last 40 years, the MAVEN spacecraft — short for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution — will set its sights on the thin shell of air swirling above the Red Planet's dry and frigid surface.

Not exact matches

An orbiter that used the other four wavelengths, too, could do even more, Dyar says.

The initial 2016 phase of the mission would carry an orbiter designed to sniff out possible sources of methane and other trace gases that might signal the presence of microbial life on Mars.

Observations made by NASA's Lunar Prospector orbiter in the late 1990s identified hydrogen - rich areas near the moon's poles but could not determine whether that hydrogen was bound up in water or was present in some other form.

Other factions within planetary - science circles would prefer to send another mission to Titan — maybe even an airborne drone, a sailboat or a submarine — or to reach for farther frontiers by sending orbiters to Uranus and Neptune, the last two planets that remain scarcely explored.

A side benefit of it is that information about when two orbiters will be near each other — though safely apart — could be used for planning coordinated science observations.

NASA has beefed up a process of traffic monitoring, communication and maneuver planning to ensure that Mars orbiters do not approach each other too closely.

«It is amazing,» says Chris Draper, who works on the heat shield for the European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter — which will go closer to the sun than any other human - made object — at Airbus Defence and Space in Stevenage, UK.

In addition to the PAL ramp, there are also other areas of the tank and the orbiter that NASA is examining very carefully:

Two are sticking above the tiles, one by 2.8 centimetres (1.1 inches) and the other by as much as 2.2 cm (0.9 inches) near the front of the orbiter.

To protect sensitive equipment aboard MAVEN from possible harm, some instruments were turned off during the flyby; the same was done for other Mars orbiters.

Despite the disappointments, there is a silver lining to this latest dark patch on Mars: The ExoMars program's other main component, a satellite called the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) that served as Schiaparelli's mother ship, successfully entered Mars's orbit after deploying the lander.

It and other Martian volcanoes act like skate ramps to launch dust up to 75 kilometres above the planet's surface, observations from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) have revealed.

Planetary scientist David Catling of the University of Washington in Seattle says that the Spirit data, in concert with other detections, such as that from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter observed in the Nili Fossae region of Mars, present a strong case for carbonates on Mars.

Meanwhile, ESA reports that the Trace Gas Orbiter — the main scientific rationale for the ExoMars 2016 mission — is in good health, and is set to begin slowly lowering the altitude of its orbit so that it can begin looking for methane and other gases that could signal life on Mars.

In the first phase that launched in March, Schiaparelli shared a ride with the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), which will search the martian atmosphere for methane and other gases that could signal life.

«This is a major step beyond what we understood about this moon before, and it demonstrates the kind of deep - dive discoveries we can make with long - lived orbiter missions to other planets,» said co-author Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team lead at Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colorado, and visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley.

NASA today announced that the orbiter had photographed all the Apollo landing sites other than Apollo 12, a destination that should be imaged in the next few weeks.

Three NASA Mars orbiters, two Mars rovers and other assets on Earth and in space are studying comet Siding Spring.

Atlantis and the other two remaining orbiters, Discovery and Endeavour, are headed to museums, where they will teach and inspire the public for years to come.

There are three other missions as part of this initiative, including JUICE (Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer, an L - class mission intended for a 2022 launch), Solar Orbiter (M1, intended for a 2017 launch), and Euclid (M2, intended for a 2020 launch).

The orbiter's other three instruments have a number of test observations scheduled during 20 — 28 November.

The Nili Fossae region is important to the ExoMars 2016 TGO mission as it is thought to be one of the potential source regions for transient methane gas in the Martian atmosphere that the other instruments on the orbiter is hoping to detect, characterize and determine its origins.

Star Trek's influence on NASA and space exploration was recognized publicly in 1976 when NASA named the first shuttle orbiter «Enterprise» in a ceremony that included astronauts, NASA personnel, Nimoy himself and other Star Trek cast members.

Over the past 19 years, Malin Space Science Systems has featured other heart - shaped martian landforms on Valentine's Day in images acquired by MRO CTX and the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC).

In particular, the orbiter will seek evidence of methane and other gases that could be signatures of active biological or geological activity.

Solar Orbiter will look at particles, plasma and other items in an environment relatively close to the sun, before these things are modified by being transported across the solar system.

The Trace Gas Orbiter can detect and analyse methane and other trace gases even in extremely low concentrations, with an improved accuracy of three orders of magnitude over previous measurements.

MAVEN and other agency assets, such as the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, are under no threat from the cloud, which exists at an altitude of between 93 miles (150 km) to 190 miles (300 km) above the Martian surface.

But sterilization for other missions, like orbiters and geology - oriented explorers, could be scaled back.