Space Probes

Representation of the heliosphere with the Voyagers (Image NASA/JPL-Caltech)

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NASA has confirmed that its Voyager 2 space probe has entered interstellar space. The instruments still operating confirmed that it passed through the outer boundary of the heliosphere, called heliopause, where the influence of solar wind ends meeting interstellar particles. These results were presented by members of the Voyager mission team today at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) being held in Washington these days.

Asteroid Bennu (Image NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona)

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NASA and Lockheed Martin have confirmed that the OSIRIS-REx space probe has reached the asteroid Bennu. From its orbit, at a distance of about 5 kilometers (a bit more than 3 miles), it will start studying its surface creating a map over the course of about a year and a half. This will allow NASA scientists not only to get to know it better but also to choose the most suitable area to proceed with the next phase of the mission, which will consist of taking samples from Bennu’s surface to be returned to Earth.

The Dawn space probe during its preparation (Photo NASA/Amanda Diller)

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NASA announced the end of the mission of its Dawn space probe after it ran out of the hydrazine used by its thrusters prevented it from orienting towards Earth to communicate with the mission control through NASA’s Deep Space Network. Dawn is in a stable orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres and will probably remain there for at least 50 years. It’s the only space probe to have orbited two celestial bodies since the first part of its mission was orbiting the giant asteroid Vesta.

Greeley Crater (Image ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)

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New images captured by ESA’s Mars Express space probe’s High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) show Greeley Crater on Mars. Its name was officially approved in 2015 by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) to honor geologist Ronald Greeley, who passed away in 2011 after having worked on various Mars missions, also being part of the team that manages the HRSC instrument.

BepiColombo's space probe blasting off atop an Ariane 5 rocket (Photo courtesy ESA-CNES-Arianespace)

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A few hours ago the two space probes of ESA and JAXA’s BepiColombo mission blasted off on an Ariane 5 ECA rocket from the Kourou base in French Guiana. Almost 27 minutes after launch, the spacecraft regularly separated from the rocket’s last stage along with the Mercury Transfer Module (MTM), which will provide the propulsion through its ion engines to transport the probes to the planet Mercury.