Weekly Links
Down to earth
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) may see another launch slip.
The world’s largest airplane, built by Stratolaunch in Mojave, California, was rolled out for runway tests.
Captured new video of @Stratolaunch plane as it reached a top taxi speed of 40 knots (46 mph) with all flight surfaces in place on Sunday. The team verified control responses, building on the first taxi tests conducted in December. pic.twitter.com/OcH1ZkxZRA
— Paul Allen (@PaulGAllen) February 26, 2018
NASA’s next Mars lander, InSight, was delivered to the launch site in California.
The Orion crew access arm was installed on the SLS mobile launcher at KSC.
In Orbit
Alexander Misurkin, Joe Acaba, and Mark Vande Hei returned to Earth safely in their Soyuz last week. There are only three crew onboard the ISS until a new crew launches in two weeks.
Two rocket launches last week:
- February 27 – Japan launched an H-IIA rocket carrying a reconnaissance satellite
- March 2 – ULA launched an Atlas V rocket carrying a new weather satellite for NOAA
Around the solar system
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is still operating normally after its safe mode scare in February.
The amazing engineer’s at NASA’s JPL have figured out how to use the Mar rover Curiosity’s drill, despite the failure of the device in December 2016. The rover should resume scientific drill operations now that the technique has been demonstrated on Mars.
Out There
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer Space Telescope have discovered a distant water-rich planet, Wasp-39b. The planet is not Earth-like – it is a large planet like Saturn. However, the technique used to detect the atmospheric make-up of Wasp-39b is the best spectrum yet taken of an exoplanet.