NASA

The Cygnus cargo spacecraft captured by the Canadarm2 robotic arm on NG-21 mission (Image NASA TV)

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Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft, launched last Sunday, August 4, has just reached the International Space Station and was captured by the Canadarm2 robotic arm. Astronaut Matthew Dominick, assisted by his colleague Jeanette Epps, will soon begin the slow maneuver to move the Cygnus until it docks with the Station’s Unity module after about two hours.

The Cygnus cargo spacecraft arrived on schedule despite some issues with a thruster burn that was scheduled to occur about 45 minutes after separation from SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket’s last stage. Initial reports indicated that the onboard computer had canceled the burn due to low pressure within the engine systems. Northrop Grumman engineers were able to compensate for the issue with a new burn schedule after reviewing pressure data and determining that it was still acceptable for the thrusters to work.

Cygnus cargo spacecraft blasting off atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket (Image NASA TV)

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A little while ago, Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft blasted off atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center on its NG-21 or CRS NG-21 mission. After about 15 minutes, it successfully separated from the rocket’s last stage and set on its course. This is the second of at least three resupply missions to the International Space Station with various payloads launched using the Falcon 9 rocket while waiting for the new version of Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket to be ready.

An image of the asteroid Dimorphos (a) with a magnified area (b) that was analyzed in one of the articles and a mapping of the fractures of the boulders (c)

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Five articles published in the journal “Nature Communications” report different analyses of data collected by NASA’s DART spacecraft and the Italian Space Agency’s LICIACube nanosatellite that accompanied it on its mission that ended with the collision with Dimorphos, a small satellite asteroid of Didymos, which occurred on September 26, 2022. Various teams of researchers with members in common offered possible reconstructions of the processes that led to the formation of the pair of asteroids and their characteristics. These studies are connected to the defense of the Earth from asteroid impacts.

The Cheyava Falls Rock Found on Mars (Image NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

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NASA’s Mars Rover Perseverance discovered a rock that contains chemical signatures and structures that might have been created by ancient Martian life forms. The rock, nicknamed Cheyava Falls, was found in Neretva Vallis during Perseverance’s journey inside Jezero Crater on Mars and was examined with the SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals) instrument. The rock contains organic compounds, but it’s currently not possible to rule out that they formed through non-biological processes. The PIXL (Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry) instrument detected iron and phosphates in black halos on the rock.

The rocks that include yellow crystals of pure sulfur in Gediz Vallis on Mars (Image NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

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NASA’s Mars Rover Curiosity found a Martian rock containing crystals of elemental sulfur, which means it’s pure sulfur. In the past, in the same area, the Gediz Vallis channel’s area, the presence of sulfur in various compounds was detected but it’s the first time that it was detected in its pure form. It’s such an anomaly that its discovery was compared to that of an oasis in the desert. A field with stones made of pure sulfur shouldn’t exist on Mars, and scientists following Curiosity’s exploration of Mount Sharp, at the center of Gale Crater, will have more work to do to explain its formation.