11 May 2020
Martian brines likely to be present, just not habitable says new study
... be supported in nightly brines that are likely widespread through the shallow loose surface deposits known as Martian regolith. Now, a new study presented by a team of US astronomers and headed by Edgard Rivera-Valentín at the Lunar and Planetary...
27 July 2020
Radiation-loving fungus could protect astronauts from cosmic rays
... hitting the Red Planet. However, if you combined the fungus with other in situ resources such as martian regolith, then a thinner layer of the black mould would suffice, say Shunk and colleagues. “Through the design...
18 September 2020
NASA chiefs hint that Artemis will land at Apollo site, not lunar poles
... shadowed craters on the Moon, scientists think that large quantities of water, either in ice or mixed with lunar regolith, could be available for human explorers to make use of. Water is a critical resource for long-term exploration, as it can...
16 October 2020
SWRI tests "Clockwork Starfish" for sampling asteroids
...in 2016. The initial experiment (BORE) was designed as a simple, no-moving-parts experiment to study the settling effects of regolith, as very little is known about the low-gravity geological processes on the surfaces of small bodies, explained Durda...
23 November 2020
China's lunar sample return mission to launch tonight
... around two kilograms of samples by both scooping up surface material with a mechanical arm and by drilling through the regolith up to a depth of two metres. After sampling is complete, the ascender will transfer the collected materials to the...
11 December 2020
A US company is aiming to race rovers on the Moon next year
... agency. Nasa is paying the Colorado-based company $1 (£0.74), a sum proposed by Lunar Outpost, to collect a small sample of lunar regolith, which the company will collect with its Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform, or MAPP. The samples will...
