ESA and Roscosmos’ TGO spacecraft and Schiaparelli lander launched atop a Proton-M rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. After about 10 minutes, the Breeze M upper stage separated and began the ten and a half hours of maneuvers that will take them out of the Earth’s orbit and en route to the planet Mars.
The hopes to be able to contact the lander Philae on the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko’s surface have now faded and ESA is also pessimistic. DLS, the German space agency, runs the LCC (Lander Control Center) and in recent months tried to re-establish contact after Philae communicated for a while on several occasions but issued a statement declaring that it’s time to say goodbye to the lander.
The Mars Rover Opportunity landed on Mars January 25, 2004 at 05.05 UTC. Its mission went far beyond all expectations and after a few years we started taking it for granted. In 2010, the loss of its sister, the Mars Rover Spirit, reminded us that space missions are conducted in unforgiving environments and any problem can be fatal.
The Opportunity mission controllers tried to preserve the rover placing it on a sloping terrain during the Martian winters so that its solar panels can receive the most possible sunlight. Unfortunately, other problems have been limiting its efficiency for a long time.
An article published in the journal “Nature Communications” describes the discovery of a new type of rock on the Moon, precisely in Mare Imbrium. It was possible thanks to the data collected by the Chinese Yutu rover during its Chang’e 3 mission. In a crater called Zi Wei, Yutu found a type of basalt with a composition different from those collected in past decades during the American and Soviet Moon missions.
The Mars Rover Curiosity has been finding many rocks rich in silica, a compound formed from silicon and oxygen, in an area of Mount Sharp on Mars that it’s been exploring for some months. A few months ago the discovery of that kind of rocks was a surprise, so much so that mission managers changed the Curiosity’s research schedule to perform further analyzes. That decision led to the discovery of other silica-rick rocks and to further studies to try to explain their presence.
