Chandrayaan-2 APXS is at the lunar high latitude
NASA’s Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter has revealed lunar multiring basins on Moon are dominated by pyroxene. It explained why lunar rocks have an isotope composition similar to those on Earth. It also revealed the Radial thickness variation in impact crater ejecta. Compositional maps of lunar polar regions derived from Kaguya Spectral Profiler and Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter data.
China has sent its first-ever samples from the far side of the moon
The first soil samples taken from the far side of the Moon arrived on Earth on Wednesday. The samples were delivered by the Chang’e 6 spacecraft, which landed at the moon’s south pole in December 2017. China plans to send its Chang’e 7 spacecraft to the moon’s south pole in 2026 to search for water and other resources.
For now, melting ice fixes the leap-second problem
Leap seconds, which are used to make the difference between official time on Earth and Earth’s rotation rate, have a dramatic impact on computer infrastructure, researchers said. The addition of leap seconds can have a drastic effect on infrastructure of computers in the modern world, they added. Leap seconds aren’t required to be inserted into a computer, researchers said.
NASA collected a sample from a asteroid for the first time
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has successfully landed on asteroid Bennu after a 6.4-year journey. It landed on the asteroid, which is about 90 million km from Earth, to sample and return the asteroid’s surface pebbles. If found to be intact, that would be the biggest haul of extraterrestrial material carried back by any nation on Earth since Apollo astronauts carried pieces of the moon home.
This weekend is the last chance for NASA to bring home asteroids
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, which will return asteroid rock samples to Earth, is on track to reach the target on October 2, the space agency has announced. The mission will collect samples from an asteroid nicknamed ‘Asteroid X’ that is roughly the size of a medium-sized sedan. NASA’s Psyche mission will launch in October to another asteroid called ‘Phosphorus’.